{"id":1028,"date":"2011-07-28T08:12:52","date_gmt":"2011-07-28T12:12:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jorahlavin.wordpress.com\/?p=314"},"modified":"2011-07-28T08:12:52","modified_gmt":"2011-07-28T12:12:52","slug":"knitters-inventory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=1028","title":{"rendered":"Knitter&#8217;s Inventory"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been thinking this morning about my &#8220;knitting journey.&#8221; This fall I&#8217;ll hit my 4-year mark from when I started to learn to knit. I have 54 finished <a title=\"Jorah's projects list\" href=\"http:\/\/www.ravelry.com\/projects\/Jorah\">projects in my list on Rav<\/a>, or about one F.O. per month. More than I expected, really. But I&#8217;ve never been interested in churning out projects. I&#8217;m a lot more interested in learning new things.<\/p>\n<p>Looking at the list that way shows that I&#8217;ve been true to my focus; most of those projects are first of a kind for me, or steps in learning, where I&#8217;ve done a clumsy first effort and progressed to a harder or more-finished project on the next project of that type. My only &#8216;gimee&#8217; projects tend to be for charity knitting&#8230; for instance, the mittens I made early this year using super-chunky yarn.<\/p>\n<p>I haven&#8217;t done anything often enough to get really good at a particular technique, but I don&#8217;t believe that learning happens in a linear fashion (at least for me). I seem to learn in a way similar to accretion, where each bit of learning (when it actually sticks) builds a bit more of the structure. So learning to do stranded color work leads to increases in my skill in yarn handling and tension control, and learning to cable helped me learn to &#8216;read&#8217; my knitting on my lace projects.<\/p>\n<p>Overall, I&#8217;m pleased with the progress I&#8217;ve made so far. My frustration with my current convertible mittens centers on the feeling that I didn&#8217;t push myself. I suspect that I&#8217;m going to thin out <a title=\"Jorah's Rav queue\" href=\"http:\/\/www.ravelry.com\/people\/Jorah\/queue\">my queue <\/a>of any simplistic patterns and focus on things which&#8230; after two months or more of work&#8230; I&#8217;ll be thrilled with, not just happy the project is done.<\/p>\n<p>Some things that have changed for me over four years of knitting:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I thought that I&#8217;d always do simple patterns. Now I look for complexity.<\/li>\n<li>I thought I&#8217;d always use thick yarn. Now I work mostly with fingering weight.<\/li>\n<li>I loved rugged-looking, uneven yarn at first. Now I love smooth, tightly-wound yarn.<\/li>\n<li>I used to compulsively buy any yarn that appealed to me. Now I have so much yarn in my stash that I (generally) only buy for specific projects. Any time I think&#8230; &#8220;ohhh,\u00a0<em>that<\/em>\u00a0yarn is so cool!&#8221; I try to remember the ultra-cool skeins lurking in my stash, which have never yet seen a moment of use.<\/li>\n<li>I thought I was alone being a guy who knits. I&#8217;ve discovered a rich community of men who knit, but even more importantly, I&#8217;ve discovered that the Charlotte knitting community is incredibly welcoming to male knitters. In fact, I&#8217;d say that I&#8217;ve had only a tiny percentage of knitters anywhere react to me in anything but a warm and helpful fashion.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>What has\u00a0<strong>not<\/strong>\u00a0changed&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I still haven&#8217;t found time to really learn to spin, nor prep the fleece I have in my stash, nor refinish the spinning wheel. (However, at least I know about these things now!)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been thinking this morning about my &#8220;knitting journey.&#8221; This fall I&#8217;ll hit my 4-year mark from when I started to learn to knit. I have 54 finished projects in my list on Rav, or about one F.O. per month. More than I expected, really. But I&#8217;ve never been interested in churning out projects. I&#8217;m &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=1028\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Knitter&#8217;s Inventory&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[85],"tags":[105],"class_list":["post-1028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-knitting","tag-learning"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgY3e-gA","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1024,"url":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=1024","url_meta":{"origin":1028,"position":0},"title":"&#8220;You must be very patient&#8230;&#8221;","author":"Jorah","date":"May 29, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"For some reason, people who don't knit will often say something along these lines: \"Wow, you knit, huh? You must be very patient\" or \"I don't have the patience to do that.\" This may be code for\u00a0boy, that looks boring,\u00a0but let's take it as an honest statement. The fact is;\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Knitting&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Knitting","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?cat=85"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1020,"url":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=1020","url_meta":{"origin":1028,"position":1},"title":"Something for me: Morningside Neckwarmer","author":"Jorah","date":"January 16, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"I wanted to take a break from mitten knitting and make myself something. A friend recently kidded me for wearing a \"store bought\" woven scarf. She said something along the lines of \"why aren't you wearing something you made?\" Truth: the scarves I've made were boring, or seemingly took forever\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Knitting&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Knitting","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?cat=85"},"img":{"alt_text":"My first attempt to knit brioche stitch","src":"https:\/\/jorahlavin.files.wordpress.com\/2011\/01\/neckwarmer_closeup.jpg?w=350&h=200&crop=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1004,"url":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=1004","url_meta":{"origin":1028,"position":2},"title":"Glove dreams","author":"Jorah","date":"December 19, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Something fun happened today; fun for me, anyway! I had one of those internal events that happen sometimes when I've been studying a new subject really intently; a whole bunch of disparate information twisted around and turned into ...well, I guess you could say \"understanding.\" I've been thinking about how\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Knitting&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Knitting","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?cat=85"},"img":{"alt_text":"A scan of my hand with grid lines drawn on it","src":"https:\/\/jorahlavin.files.wordpress.com\/2010\/12\/glove-hand-lines.jpg?w=350&h=200&crop=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":998,"url":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=998","url_meta":{"origin":1028,"position":3},"title":"Trying to revive the blog&#8230;","author":"Jorah","date":"July 19, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm trying to get myself back into writing. I've been keeping up pretty well with my knitting, but have been so busy at work that when I'm at home I usually feel too tired to write much of anything. However... I've discovered that I miss posting here, so after a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Post&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Post","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?cat=30"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=macmethods&l=as2&o=1&a=1580174825","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":982,"url":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=982","url_meta":{"origin":1028,"position":4},"title":"Stress and knitting","author":"Jorah","date":"June 28, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I only learned to knit nine months ago, but since then I've fallen into the pattern of stressing about unfinished projects. Last night, I knit three rows on the afghan, then set it aside to get ready for bed. I realized that I had no expectations about this particular project,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Knitting&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Knitting","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?cat=85"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":992,"url":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=992","url_meta":{"origin":1028,"position":5},"title":"It has been so long&#8230;","author":"Jorah","date":"November 22, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I will get back on the computer this weekend and post some new material. My legions of fans... (you know who you are, TG76) will have noticed that it has been almost\u00a0more than two months since I last posted. It is not a coincidence that my last post was just\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Knitting&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Knitting","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?cat=85"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1028\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}