I Now Have More Questions

I have just bought a new book.  (But a completely different version of that).  On knitting.  My husband wanted to know why I need another knitting book but I actually don’t have that many.  Truthfully.

I bought this one because it was a) reduced, b) had good pictures and c) promising to bring me enlightenment when it comes to the most intimidating and impossible of knitting techniques: intarsia.

But there is a problem.

I haven’t got to the section on intarsia yet but out of the two hundred questions it offers solutions to, I’ve come unstuck on Question Three.  (That’s about fifteen seconds into the book, I reckon).  And my confidence has been more than a little shaken.  The thing is that I’m just beginning to see myself as a knitter.  A slightly random, idiosyncratic knitter, to be sure.  After all, I definitely can’t call myself a ‘proper’ knitter, I don’t jumpers.  I’m still recovering from the first and last one.

So, the question is:  How do I hold the yarn?

There are pictures, good quality photos.

One for the British method.  (Smaller, is this less common or popular these days?)

One for the Continental method.

There can be no confusion.  The pictures are clear.  The evidence is before me.

I don’t hold my yarn properly!

Why I’m quite so surprised, shocked and shaken by this revelation, I’m not quite sure.  But I’m definitely questioning my status as a knitter all over again.  Can you be a knitter if you don’t hold your yarn properly?

The Continental version looks like a left-hander as far as I’m concerned.

Hm, left-handed?

I think that I was originally taught by a left-hander.

And do you remember the wee problem with my crochet technique?

I know that I don’t use the British method because of my friends do and they’re fast, effective and knit completely differently to me.

But I definitely don’t hold the yarn in my left hand either.  So am I a left-handed Continental or something?  Or just plain wrong?

Also, I don’t wrap my yarn around any other fingers.  Perhaps this is why my tension is soooo suspect?  (Husband might be right on that matter, just don’t tell him).  Apparently stressed out people knit tightly.  I don’t.  And I’m normally stressed out.

I’m confused.

Does it even matter how you hold the yarn?

FO: I Must be Getting Tame in My Old Age

Fortunately, however, tame is not quite the same as boring.  I hope!  Having finished one baby project in pastels, I find myself onto another.  It was a surprise gift for the very lovely plumber who has taken on attempting to fit pipework and, eventually, a basin (oh, the luxury!) in my bathroom, otherwise known as that bathroom.  I suppose if you really want to be pedantic, and you know that I do, it wasn’t really for the plumber but for his hatchling.  (And let’s not go there with the phrase, oh the plumber is expecting.  Aren’t English and my English great?  (Maybe it’s just mine).).

Anybody who offers to take on work in that bathroom is an absolutely wonderful person in my book and if they’re going to offer to fit the basin, albeit eventually (tiling takes it time), well then they’re just the bees-knees.  (Should there be an apostrophe in that?)  To show my gratitude, I decided to whip up a little something from my stash.

I had some white fluffy yarn that was just crying out to be inflicted on a baby and I knew that the Pop! cardigan would knit up in just a couple of days so I got started.

The yarn is all and well good, it was bought way back when I didn’t know much about anything and especially not about yarn.  It is an artificial blend  but there is some wool in it at least.  (I didn’t think that the bamboo/cotton blend that I used last time and still have enough of to make another cardigan would be warm enough for a English December baby, actually it might have made it into January).  I think it’s the type of acrylic (courtelle?) that gives the yarn it’s mohair-like fuzziness.  Let’s just say that it’s pain to rip back.  And yes, I had to rip back several times.  A sort of Murphy’s Law effect with impossible yarn and the fact that I was Tired again.  I can’t count when I’m Tired at all.

I think that this may be the closest that I ever come to that infamous matinée jacket:

(It was really hard to get decent photos of the cardigan though because the weather was absolutely abysmal.  Would you believe that shot is taken in a south-facing window in the middle of the day?  Truly impossible lighting conditions).

Happily, I didn’t get totally taken by the pastel-loving handknit monster and had these buttons to brighten things up with:

But as the weather was so awful, I had really trouble getting it to dry after being blocked.  Even with the hairdryer!  (What, I’m not meant to use a hairdryer as a blocking tool?!)  It persistently kept a little damp feel to one corner so I decided to not wrap it (on the last day the plumber would be over) but present it artfully on a children’s sized coat hanger.  (Well it works for all the clothes shops and supermarkets, doesn’t it?!)

I wrote up a care label (because myself, I always worry about checking labels for the right way to wash things.  But then, having read them, I do exactly what I want anyway) and found a length of newborn baby ribbon in my ribbon stash.

I really like this pattern, it is relatively easy and quick, and I have a funny feeling that I might even return to it again.  (I think this is actually the first time I’ve made two of any pattern, obviously not counting things like socks which are meant to be two).  Plumber was very happy with it and the baby has since hatched well and healthy.  And I should be returning my usual bold colour palette shortly.  Hopefully.

Am I Setting Myself Up for Failure?

Goals are targets.  Targets are things that get missed.

Sitting myself down and deciding what I want to plan for and aim for just seems utterly pointless to me.  I know that I will fail and having a list etched in black and white as tangible proof of just what I set out to do but haven’t achieved just overwhelms.  I am defeated before I even begin.

But I also recognise that without goals and plans my life will have no direction.  Perhaps it never has had direction.  All I aim to do is get through each day, one day at a time, with the minimal stress, pain and failure.  However …

I’m not keen on boats and being in them but as anybody who hasn’t even been in a boat before can tell you, it’s best to have a compass.  At the very least, it helps to know which way you’re facing.  And after a compass, comes maps, or charts as they seem to prefer to call them in the nautical world.  You mark where you are and where you want to end up.  You make a plan.

I need a plan if my life is going to find direction, if I’m going to try and be someone, not something, just someone living their life.  But as they want to.  The directions that I go in, that I take are entirely dependent on the winds and whims of other people.  I place pleasing other people far above my own happiness.  And I think that’s something that needs to be adjusted.

It’s been a deep winter for me; I have been lost and absorbed in reflection.  But it has been a good thing.  I know and I can see that I am progressing.  I am making progress.  I don’t think that I’ve recognised that before.  I’m starting to realise that the future isn’t quite the menacing monster that I always believed it to be.  I am beginning to think that I might be able to.

Able to do what?

Well, I guess, eventually, anything that I set my heart and mind to.

But to get there I’m going to need to take some smaller steps.

I can cope with small steps.

And setting goals isn’t just about failure.

I’m not a failure.

I could succeed.

I just need to believe in myself.

And give it a go.

And throw off all the stupid beliefs and complexes that hold me back.

Ballast can be a good thing; it can stabilise you, if you’re a boat.

But there can be such a thing as too much ballast.

It just becomes stuff, junk, weight.

Redundant and not serving any purpose.

It shackles you and helps you sink.

(I do believe in mixing metaphors, it seems).

So my first goal is this:

I need to dare to risk and I need to risk to dare.

(I couldn’t decide which one made the most sense, let’s live dangerously and go with both).

Taking risk has always been something very dangerous and even alien to me.  I actively avoid risk.  Risk is just about setting yourself up for failure.

I need to adopt this new attitude, I need to be brave, I need to believe, I need live.

So this year, I hope to move forward with that motto.

But measuring success, quantifying achievement can be difficult.

How do I know if I’m moving ahead or succeeding?

I need specific goals, targets to aim for.

Marks on a chart, plotting a specific course that I can follow.

I know that I may not always be able to meet them.  But as the Jester Queen once reminded me, many wise people think that failure is only a step to success.

For example, when it comes to blogging, I now have a goal.   I’m going to aim for three posts a week.  Nothing too hard to achieve, if you look back at most months then I’m already meeting this target.

So why set a goal that I’m already perhaps reaching?

I need to do this with baby steps; I first need to confirm to myself that I’m not failing before I take any further, more ambitious steps.

I don’t want to tie myself down though, commit myself to a statistic.  I want to write because I want to.  I don’t want blogging to be about numbers, although numbers can be nice and reassuring.  I’m going to be reasonable on myself.  I’m going to set a goal which is reachable, attainable, possible.  I won’t set myself up for failure.  And especially because of life and health, it’ll be an average that I’m working on, I’ll average it out across the entire year, some weeks the words and posts may come more often than others.  I want to write a minimum of 156 posts this year.  We’ll see how it goes.

Talking of health leads me to another goal, perhaps a harder one to measure or assess.

I want to be honest.  I want to be honest with myself.

For example, when I need to rest, I will rest and when I can’t do something, I will accept that I can’t.  I will listen to my body.

And of course there’s another big thing in my life:  knitting.

How do you set goals in knitting?

Well, I suppose you could aim for a certain number of stitches per week or month.  But that is highly variable, depending on yarn weight and my rather suspect tension.  Five stitches can be very little or an entire row, depending on the project.  And I know that there are people who can calculate how many stitches there are in a particular project but I’m not one of them.  Actually, frankly, I don’t think I’d want to know.  I get demoralised by numbers higher than what I can count to (normally about 30).

Each month, I’m going to write a list of the projects that I want start and finish.

I also want to start a new project from my Knit Now magazines each month too.  As someone pointed on the Ravelry forums, it’s so easy to open a new magazine issue and go ‘ooh’ and promise to one day make this piece or that, but do we ever?

Well, the magazines are sitting on the shelf, the patterns are still there.  And it’s about time I got on with it.  I’ve lined up my favourites in my Ravelry queue and I’ll slowly tackle them.  One project at a time, one month a time.

I’ve already noticed that my knitting goals are also tied to my goal of honesty.  There days and even weeks when I can’t knit as fast or as much as I would like.  It can be bitterly disappointing and frustrating but that’s why I have got to be honest with myself.

I’ve never shared my goals with anyone.  I’m not even sure if I’ve set goals before.  But here are just a few and I know that you’re all prepared to take yet another (long-winded, I’m sure) journey will me.

I wonder how I will do.

Patchwork

Image from Lion Brand Website

Sometimes, I think, patchwork can sound shabby, the idea of cobbling together something, often utilitarian, from leftover scraps.  But patchwork is much more than that.  For example, a patchwork quilt, even though humble in origin and purpose, is so much more than the sum of its parts.  Because, you see, those aren’t leftovers; they’re souvenirs, treasures, stories, memories.  Each of them having so much power in its own right is then carefully lined up with the others, a craft of both eye-pleasing design and technical ability, fine stitches must hold the design together and the design must stand alone and yet be part of every one of its individual components.

I love patchwork, it appeals to me that those squares can unite and become an integral piece, no longer just a blue square or a red square, but part of much bigger design.  I love colour too.  I love history and heritage.  But I can’t sew.

I’ve long wanted a patchwork quilt on my bed, for all of the reasons above and probably many more.  But patchwork quilts don’t make themselves, they need a big investment and commitment of all kinds of resources and as we on the whole are no longer thrifty and making our own clothes, I doubt many of us even have a scrap bag anymore.  This forces you to turn to specifically designed and branded fabrics, which are available, particularly on the internet as fabric shops are now far and few between these days, but at great cost.  Or at least at what I perceive to be great cost.  The colours are dependent on some fashionable palette which has little to do with what colours I actually would want.  I don’t really do psychedelic flower power or twee pastels.  I’d rather there was a middle ground.

If I could get my hands on fabric then what?  Well, as I said, I don’t sew.  I’m also terrified of sewing machines.  (And most other electric equipment).  I can mend things with mismatched thread; in fact I’ve become quite a dab hand at darning socks.  However, this is more motivated by thrifty economy than any particular aptitude or talent.  Patchwork would require both.  In large quantities.

You see, this is what I do.  I dream something up then decide who is the best person to do it.  I rarely count myself.  I can see other people’s strengths and abilities, focussing on those.  I know that someone else could do a brilliant job of it.  I’d just mess it up.  There’s a sort of humbleness in asking for help, in knowing and accepting that someone can do a better job than myself.  I rely on others and I count on their talents.

It’s not likely that I could ever succeed in making a patchwork quilt and frankly, I don’t think that there are too many people around me who could do it either.  Husband sews beautifully but he really isn’t keen on taking on such an ambitious project.  Especially as it is my project.  He feels, for some reason, that if you want something done, you should do it yourself.  He doesn’t appreciate how I evaluate skillsets and find the right or best person for the job.  After all, it normally involves him.

It’s not really laziness.  Just a profound fear of a failure.  Why risk doing something that you know you’re going to fail?  Why risk messing up or making a mistake?  I don’t trust myself.  And failure is unpardonable.

Recently, however, I’ve been thinking and working through a lot of thoughts and fears like this.  I’m starting to realise that there are things that I can do myself and that I might not necessarily be bad at everything I do.  This is quite a revolution which has rather changed the world around me.  A little new, a little different, a little scary but possibly positive, however much I don’t like change.

So I return to the line ‘I cannot sew’.  It’s true.  It’s not just a question of negative perception.  I won’t be able to sew my own patchwork quilt.  My abilities aren’t there for that and possibly never will be, although I really do think that someone my age should get over their fear of sewing machines at some point.

So what can I do if I have really set my heart on having a patchwork quilt?  (Which I have).

Well, there is something.

I can knit.

I could knit a quilt, the quilt.

That in itself sounds quite challenging.  I can’t count, I have a poor attention span and I’m not overly confident about my knitting abilities.

But there, you see, is the wonder of patchwork.

Patchwork is elements, simple elements, brought together as one cohesive design; it only becomes big right at the very end.  A patchwork quilt, however big, is just the size of each ‘patch’ or ‘square’.

I can knit something that small.  I can concentrate on something that small.  I can succeed in making something that small.

I will knit my quilt.

Now, I just need to start saving up for the yarn.  I have some in my sights, in just the perfect colours.

And what could have been unachievable suddenly has become achievable.  I’ve matched the project to my skill levels and I know now that I can approach it just like life, one square at a time.

That brings me to more patchwork thoughts.  Knitting, for me and in these posts, has often been a metaphor for exploring and enabling progress.  Knitting has slowly built my confidence and given me a tangible way of developing my creativity and measuring success.  They laugh about knitting ‘for therapy’ but it has been, I couldn’t have got this far without the metaphoric qualities of knitting and the peace that I get from working one stitch at a time.

It might sound strange but I’ve never been able to ‘see’ the future.  The future is an absolutely fear-inspiring monstrosity that I try to avoid facing at all times.  It’s difficult for me to understand and perceive the future, never mind a future.  Perhaps it comes back to that fear of failing again, the future can be a huge responsibility and it’s definitely something that I believe that I can and will fail at.  I am often overwhelmed too, both physically and psychologically, so living in the present is normally all I can manage.  The future is almost like an unbelievable dream, a mirage. You can pin so much hope in it but it might never materialise.  I don’t like wasting my energy chasing the impossibly ephemeral.  I don’t like trusting and relying on things that perhaps will never exist, that only bring bitter disappointment and loss.  I don’t want to feel either of those things.  I hate them.  I can’t find a future, never mind the future.  It’s too big, too intangible, too much responsibility and too much disappointment.

So I began to think about goals, goals are often tangible, quantifiable.  If you achieve what you set out to achieve then that is success.  You can tick it off and prove to others that you’ve done it, that you have achieved.  Maybe working on goals, something that I also avoid for fear of failure would enable me to slowly get used to working towards that distant, threatening future.   Perhaps rather than jumping into the future, I had to take my more familiar small steps towards it.

Then it clicked.

The future is patchwork.

(That isn’t a trend prediction).

The future is patchwork.

I don’t have to present a complete quilt; I don’t have to make a complete quilt.  Patchwork doesn’t work that way.

Patchwork is the small steps.

I just have to choose a square to work on.

Then work on it.

It’s only when a life is finished that you can hold it up to the light to see the finished design.

I don’t have to have the finished design ready before I start.

I don’t have to commit to all of it.  It can grow from one corner, one piece, one square.  The future can be manageable, broken down into individual portions.  Portions which are small enough to work on, to concentrate on and to put your best effort into.

You can choose the broad themes, of course, before you even start.  Colours, eventual design features, techniques.  Maybe even stitches, if you’re a knitter.  And those themes will repeat in other squares, in other squares of your life.

The future is patchwork.

I can choose one small square and work on that.

I could even work on more than one.

If needs be, I can put it aside and work on another.

Just like I would do, just like I will do, when I knit myself that physical patchwork quilt.

I’ve found the future.

The future is patchwork.

FO: Coffee and Cake Fingerless Mittens

After some beading on my Quaker Ridge Shawlette, I got a thing for beads.

So I decided to put some on another project too.

I had some nice, big chunky yarn that I had promised fingerless gloves out of to a wonderful friend of mine who also suffers from cold paws, she has MS and some brown seed beads.  So I set to work.

Just like that.

No pattern, just an idea.

I wanted some cables to add texture and interest.

I can do cables, they’re not hard actually, just placing the stitches in the wrong place.  Yeah, I know, I do that all time so cables?  No problem!

Because of the super chunky yarn, they knitted up in no time.

And with just one skein.

And because of the yarn weight, I obviously couldn’t thread the beads on!  I had to sew them on with a fine needle and normal sewing thread.

I gave them to my friend the very next day, all wrapped up.

She was thrilled with them and I’ve seen her wear them several times since.

She wears the cables underneath for extra grip and warmth!

But it’s lovely for a knitter to have a knitted gift appreciated, I rarely even see mine be received as they normally go off in the post.

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So may I make one little request, even if it may seem selfish or big-headed on my own part?  Please remember to appreciate the crafters in your life, they put more than just stitches or glue into their work, there’s a lot of love and hugs in even just a small gift.  And as you know from my own tales, those small gifts are also probably part of a much bigger journey.  Be glad and grateful that you get to share in their journey with them.  It’s people and journeys that we should treasure not the things.  Or even perhaps ability.

FO: Deceptive Pastels

Why do we put babies in pastel colours?  We, as a society, have an obsession with baby blue and baby pink (gender dependent) with splashes of white and an occasional foray into mint and primrose.  Who got to decide that these colours were what babies would wear forever?  And when?  In Good Wives (I think), Amy is described as putting a ribbon on the pillow of each twin ‘according to the French fashion’, blue for the boy, pink for the girl.  That wasn’t really so long ago.  Can we blame the French?  Whereas the Dutch of Haarlem, in Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates hung pincushions on the front door to announce a safe arrival to the community, red for a boy, white for a girl.  Perhaps this tradition lives on in the modern American fancy for new baby door wreaths.

It seems that, in this country especially, knitting is slow to move forward and often even behind times.  If you’re going to receive a bonnet or matinée jacket then I’m pretty sure that they won’t have been bought but been gifted by some (likely, older but well-meaning) relative.  If it is not one of those colours mentioned above (or perhaps your knitter had a reckless moment and went for peach, apricot or mauve) then I’d actually be quite surprised.  And even more surprised if it’s not 100% acrylic.   And it’s a real shame because it gives knitting and knitters bad press and it’s going to become more and more rare that those precious handknitted items are even worn much less become treasured heirlooms passed from one child or even generation to another.

Knitting and knitters need to move with the times.  There is a place for pastels and bonnets and possibly even a place for the occasional matinée jacket.  Well, they’re just cardigans by another name anyway.  But I don’t think that all is old is bad, personally I don’t think mini branded trainers and stiff, tight denim jeans are really the most practical or comfortable outfit for a baby but that doesn’t mean I’m advocated swaddling.  There has to be a balance.

I was a cloth nappy baby in a generation that had almost entirely turned ‘modern’, I still remember the smell of what parents of that generation cheerfully term as ‘rubbers’, the plastic over-pants to help with leak prevention.  We had nappy pins (giant safety pins with protective covers so they didn’t undo into baby or couldn’t be undone by baby) turning up throughout my entire childhood.  Some were pink, some were blue.  Yes, I had a brother.  Funny enough.  Cloth nappies seem to be going through another spin of popularity, especially with parents who are questioning their own impact on the environment.  And this means modern knitters, especially in America of course, have risen to the occasion.

My friends, I don’t think but we are an ocean or two apart, aren’t cloth nappy-ing but this designs were irresistible to an idiosyncratic knitter like me.  They’re called ‘soakers’ which if you think about it too long is actually pretty disgusting so don’t!  But it’s seems that, like any other specialist subject, cloth nappy-ing has its jargon: lanolising, soakers, shorties, longies, skirties, night, day … actually, those last two words I do understand.

You have seen the beginnings of the first pattern before when I started in a cotton-bamboo blend which really didn’t like ribbing so I started again with my favourite 4-ply yarn held double.

This was a pattern that got plenty of chuckles, usually as a delayed reaction.  What you knitting?  (hand over pattern) Oh, cute, I-poo … hehehe.  It’s also quite a good way of testing eyesight or whether someone is really paying attention to what you’ve just given them.  Oh, cute.  (walk away).

I like it better in the pastel colours actually.  It takes longer for impact, subtle then deeply subversive.  If you’re into toilet humour, that is.  In the words of one of my lovely friends ‘it’s not like the baby things we used to knit in the Fifties and Sixties’.  And that could be a good thing.

Isn’t that perfect for a baby gift?!

And at least it’s a change from bootees.

And yes, I did have a second pattern that I just had to knit up, it was in a similar theme.

I’m sure that all parents and other baby-looker-afterers will identify with that motif!  Regardless of what fabric may clad the baby’s posterior, the result is pretty much the same.

I wasn’t as happy with the yellow yarn that I used, it’s a different brand and with the creaminess of the ‘white’ that I was using, it does get quite lost in too many lights but it was fun to knit them up.

It also has warning chevrons just in case you missed the point.

As you know, I’m a sucker for shaping and other little genius tricks that designers seem to find no problem in conjuring up and adding to their patterns so these really appealed on those grounds too.  I had to learn to cast on stitches at the ends of rows for the first time (complex moment, with lots of research required)!  And a magical system of decreases and increases forms a perfect v-shaped crotch which means, along with generous leg cuffs (you should see some of the ones that I’ve seen with little straight stick tubes for legs, it’s bad enough on women’s shirt sleeves but baby legs really don’t do wincy and straight, straight) means that these will always be a comfortable fit.  Nappies take up a lot of space.

The legs and waists were knitted in the round.  (Here’s some advice, if you’re knitting both of these patterns at once, then there is a difference in placement of the eyelets, I didn’t notice but apparently no one else will either!).  I had to use one of my massive 60 or 80 cm circular needles on the legs which means shifting huge amounts of cable between stitch runs.  It’s not easy.  I really need DPNs!  But they’re lovely and stretchy.

Learning to cast on stitches at the ends of rows was quite a challenge but there was a further significant challenge.  That’s why it’s taken so long to post these as a finished object.  The pattern says to make a crochet cord.  Two words.  Just two words.  That totally inspire terror.  Crochet!  With a hook!  It took me a while but I came up with a cunning plan.  I know a crocheter.  No, I didn’t cheat, thank you very much.  I met up with her and she showed me how to knit a crochet chain.  (Yes, idiosyncratic people do say knit a crochet chain, trust me).  I was fine mirroring her but still had the feeling that was something not right.  That was when we discovered that I crochet with my left hand.  Honestly.  That’s why I can’t hold a crochet hook comfortably when I automatically pick it up in my right hand or teach myself from right-handed instructions (or work out how anyone could ever pick up a dropped stitch with a crochet hook).  I crochet left-handed.  I think I may have to use the word ‘idiosyncratic’ again.

Anyway, like most of the things that I’m absolutely too scared to do at first but eventually cave and risk trying, crochet chains aren’t that bad.  They knit up remarkably quickly and only need one person, unlike twisted cords which also ping when you really don’t want them to.  I will bear them in mind for future projects now that I have conquered my phobia of the hook (for the moment at least).

But I’m not going to take up crochet anytime soon, believe me.

Knitting is enough of a mental and physical challenge for me and it’s got plenty more challenges for me, I’m sure.  (And you know that I’ll be sharing them with you too!)

Whilst I was knitting up these pattern, I found a really cool blog post about wool and lanolising and stuff like that and in the future, if I was knitting for an actual cloth nappy wearing baby then I would just use a pure wool yarn rather than a blend.  There is also an entire group of Ravelry dedicated to the art and craft of soakers and longies.  It’s definitely been an interesting learning experience.

Well, I loved both of these patterns by Jane Burns and I’m looking forward to inflicting my very idiosyncratic humour and knitting on more new parents in the future.

And it seems that pastel colours have their uses after all.

I wonder if you remember seeing a sneak preview of the Toxic Soakers in a photograph in an earlier blog post?

You’d Never Guess …

… who has tomatoes still on the vine in November?  And this despite having gone with plants rather than seeds this year too!

… whose first pair of hand-knitted socks fit after all?

FO: We All Scream …

What’s the biggest thing that holds you back from starting, from accomplishing, from finishing, from achieving?  Fear.  Fear is our biggest enemy and we all know it.  But where does the fear come from?  Sure, we are confronted, bombarded even in this day and age, by things that we are told are scary.  But fear is still a choice.  I know that sometimes I choose to take risks that might be unacceptable for some people, for example I’m quite happy to walk home in the dark, and the reason that I do that is because if I stop to become fearful, fear will overtake me.  I’ve been on that very slippery slope before and I don’t want to go there again.  I choose not to fear because fear is actually a greater burden, an unacceptable risk.  For me.

Fear is still a big part of my life though.  And I know that I generate that myself because my biggest fear is that of failing.  I joke that I am a failed perfectionist.  Chronic health conditions certainly temper how much organisation, control and mastery I have over my own life but to be completely honest, I’m not good at it.   I can line CDs up alphabetically and organise my wardrobe by the rainbow but it’s a token effort, an attempt to stop the tide.  The tide of chaos, the tide of life.  I am overwhelmed.  But I still expect an awful lot from myself.  Too much sometimes.

When I start out to do something, I want it to be the best, I want perfection.  I expect perfection only from myself.  I am tolerant, indulgent even of others.  It’s just like that mystical perfection that we crave for our bodies, it doesn’t exist, it isn’t attainable.  I start over thinking the project, I get bogged down in details.  I overwhelm myself with my standards.

The thing is though that if I let go of that fear, if I don’t give into that crazy perfection desire, I still end up with something pretty good.  Something that perhaps people with different Minds to mine might feel pride in.  (I am still assessing and debating my relationship with the dread Pride, I will keep you posted if and when I discover that there’s a balanced approach).

I have to find the confidence to work through the slump, as L.M Montgomery may well term it, and to continue on.  Sometimes I give up too early.  Worn out, disheartened, crushed.  But as you know, self-confidence is not something that comes readily to me, I have long had too little self belief to find the motivation, the hope and the strength to go on when I start to fear that I have failed.

This is why this project has taken most of the year to come to fruition, although of course the Bad Patch didn’t really help either.  It’s hard to keep on top of your projects when you can barely lift the needles.  And when I could physically knit, there was often a real psychological block holding me back.

But this time, I conquered.  I didn’t let the fear win, I didn’t let it make me give up.  I fought through it.  I put the project aside when it all seemed to be going disastrously wrong and came back to it when I was ready.  Even when it didn’t turn out how I originally envisioned, I took a break then made my peace.  I’d still made something worthwhile.  Something that I hope will put a smile on a child’s face.  And you don’t need perfection to do that.

Actually, when I look back, this project has all been about facing new challenges and allowing myself the time to grow into them.

It started nearly two years ago when my husband bought me some knitting books that I had had my eye on for quite a while, part of a series called Twenty to Make, it was the four on knitted food that this idiosyncratic knitter just had to have.  You have met some of the patterns from those books when I made my Lunchbox back in the summer.

I loved the books, of course, but there was one major problem.  A lot of the patterns required knitting in the round.  I couldn’t knit in the round and was pretty sure that I never would be able.  So I bookmarked the patterns that were achievable and forget about the others, albeit regretfully.

When I knitted Fruit and Fairy Cakes (those patterns were taken from various magazines instead) for a young friend of mine and they were rapturously received, I knew I had the perfect victim for further creations.  But what could I make with my limited abilities?

Well, this spring, as my confidence started to grow a little, I learnt to knit in the round.  In slow baby steps, of course.  But there was something that I definitely knew that I wanted to make for my friend.

I cast on in March.  I knitted during car journeys.  I knitted during a chillier than expected day at the beach.  And within a couple of months, I had a half-dozen ice cones ready for filling.  But those cones also tell their own story of my growing confidence.

The first cone that I cast on, I couldn’t work with so few stitches on the needles so I had to start a few rows higher up and even the I couldn’t manage the stitch pattern as well, so the first cone also has a section of stocking stitch:

The second cone shows that at least I was learning.  Yes, I still had to start on a higher row but this one has the stitch pattern:

After that, I pretty much had the beginnings sussed:

(That’s now a chocolate cone, in case you were wondering.  They’re all high quality waffle cones which are my favourite.  There is something classic about the golden polystyrene cone that comes with a Mr Whippy, a 99, but the waffle cone beats that hands down every time.   Actually, I think I prefer the cone to the ice cream, if that’s not a little too weird.  Although ice cream is a very good partner to the cone.  If there’s just ice cream available then I sprinkle over corn flakes or some other breakfast cereal just to make it bearable.  That might be completely weird.  But it’s genetic, my father did the same. (I also used to save the end of my cone (the best bit) for him when we were out without him when I was little.  That might make me utterly, irredeemably weird but also very generous and loving).)

The other problem that I had with the cone pattern was that in the image in the book it looks like the ice cream cone is finished with a possible ridge of garter stitch then smooth stocking stitch.  I presume that this must be folded back on itself to make a ‘hem’, if you will, because stocking stitch always has the distinctive, curled rolling edge.  That’s not a problem, the problem is that when I worked the pattern instructions, I ended up with something looking like moss/seed stitch (can’t remember which is which, the definition is a little shaky).

I wasn’t liking that too much so came up with Plan B.  Only thing is, I’m till not sure whether Plan B is garter stitch or reverse stocking stitch because I was purling in the round.

By May, I was onto the ice cream itself.  This is where I met the most problems.  I tried the ice cream pattern in the book and really couldn’t get on with it.  So then I reverted to the basic rectangle that made the fairy cakes.  I had to make a few versions until I got it the right size but then I was off.

I can come up with plenty of ice cream flavours, imagination is not something that I’m short of but there’s always the Internet for far too much inspiration too.  The limiting thing is the way yarn colours behave (they don’t segue in a natural way) and that there only so many colours in my stash.

I wanted to make lots of different flavours that could be fitted into the cones according to a child’s, or their customer’s, taste.  I love mix and match in toys, I don’t like things being rigid and prescriptive.  And there I ran into another problem.

Knitted ice cream doesn’t stay cooperatively in the cone.  (It’s possible that there are various experiences to suggest that real ice cream doesn’t always stay happily in the cone either).

I was miserable.

I had failed.

My ice cream wouldn’t work.

I was miserable some more.

I decided that I would distract myself by knitting up the bag.

I had big plans for that bag.

Patchwork.  It is apparently possible to knit all the different colours together using intarsia rather than making lots of squares (ish) and sewing them together.  I hate sewing.

I say apparently because I never got there.  Too many tangles and not enough space, energy or patience.  (This was at the height of baby bird raising too, remember, my knitting and me had been relegated to the bedroom).

I was miserable.

Now my bag had failed too.

I finally picked myself up again.

Eventually I went for Plan B in the bag department too.  Stripes.

But I did cleverly design a gusset for my bag.

And then sewed it up the wrong way.

(Hey, what can I say?  I’ve been Tired this year).

I also decided to go into a little appliqué work and stitch letters on my bag.  (Well, I had done knitted motifs on the previous two bags, it was time for a change).

Did I mention that I can’t sew?

I can, however, create giant letters in a word processing program and print them then use my persuasive powers to get husband to cut them out accurately both in the paper and in the felt.  This is very fiddly job, if you thought wallpaper was the way to damage a relationship then I suggest you think again.  Felt letters are a definite make or break for any relationship.  I think we’ve survived.

There are some cracking words in English but one thing that the language really isn’t any good at is shop names.  I went overseas to find the wording for my storage bag, choosing a language that reflects the receiving family’s own cultural links and my own (literally) sweet memories.

I did that stitching myself, all by myself-some.

I was feeling better.

It was time to start making decisions about those ice creams.

They were going to have be sewn into the cones.

And I was only going to have half a dozen, the other flavours will have to wait for another time.

I lined the cones with upcycled thin plastic and then stitched the ice creams down.

Six different flavours in two types of cones.  I think it may even be vegan friendly ice cream but it’s not entirely natural, I did make them from 100% acrylic after all.

Málaga Ice Cream in Chocolate Cone, Stracciatella Ice Cream in Waffle Cone, Chocolate Chip Ice Cream in Waffle Cone

Strawberry Ice Cream in Waffle Cone, Lemon Sorbet in Waffle Cone, Mint Choc Chip in Chocolate Cone

And the title of this post?  My father always called ice cream ‘scream’ in honour of his little refrain, We All Scream for Ice Cream.  We never knew where he’d got the expression from until very recently.  I found a little beach hut with the same slogan scrawled on its front.  This was clearly not just something in my father’s head.  I took to the internet and we finally found its origin.

Do you scream for ice cream?

(And my sincere but unrepentant apologies for another humongous post on knitting, sometimes even small things require epic journeys.  Thank you for travelling with me on this one).

FO: It’s a Pair!

The trouble with socks is that there are two of them.  Now you might think that this is a good thing, except when only one reappears after washing.  It’s also not such a great thing when it comes to the knitting of them.  If one sock is scary then the second one is twice as scary.  Why?  Because it has to match.

Well, at least be similar enough to pass for a pair.

I drew the line at having the second sock be half navy blue and half black, despite the similarity of tone, because even idiosyncratic sock wearers tend to have standards these days.  It’s true, I’ve got old and boring.  I don’t buy socks anymore with those gimmicky cartoons and slogans, which never applied to me anyway.  I love shopping?  No, never.  But apparently all female sock wearers do.  Or better the ones with veiled sexist insults, stroppy ‘moo’ anyone?  Who designs these things?!  Nope, these days the majority of my socks are black, just plain old boring black.  No more stripey knee highs for me either, I think I may have grown up.  I’ve even reverted to wearing paired socks rather than the first two (or four in my case) out of the drawer.  Oh yes, I’ve grown up.

But when you buy socks, you take it for granted that they will be of a matching sock shape.  (Admittedly this is getting less likely as is the presence of enough elastic to keep the sock where it should be and fabric which actually survives more than one wash.  Increased price, decreased quality in clothing is one of my pet peeves).  If you make them yourself, you suddenly take on a very heavy burden of responsibility.

I mean, who first decided to make socks?  They really deserve a place in the history books, I’m sure, generations of cosy feet owe a huge debt of gratitude to that one person.  How did they make them?  Had knitting been invented then?  Because the next hero of sock invention is the genius who first turned a heel.  What made them do it?  Comfort plus a far superior brain than mine?  As I said about my previous sock, there is something magical about that process which connects two tubes in a very comfortable and fitted way.  I couldn’t invent that, I have to rely on wiser people to write patterns for me.

Talking of pattern writing, my heels are a little suspect.  I’m meant to have neat columns of stitches lined up at the back of the ankle and I clearly don’t.  I was a little surprised because Susan B. Anderson writes a good pattern, she wrote the Quaker Ridge pattern too, remember?  So I went on Ravelry and asked around.  As usual, the fault lies with reader/knitter error and not with the designer.  I seem to have misread a line totally but I do now know where I’m going wrong.  And more importantly, how not to go wrong next time too.

When I finished my first sock, husband wasn’t particularly keen on the toe.  He thought it looked ‘weird’.  And ‘long’.  It does actually.  And a little too square.  So he went and found a brand new pair of socks (so sock-shaped rather than foot-shaped) from his drawer and compared the toes.  They’re the same!  I guess we’ve just got a little too distrusting of anything handmade.  Especially if I’m the one making it.

These are just straight stocking stitch socks with a rib cuff to keep them up.  Some people run a thread of thin elastic, like that jewellery elastic, but apparently they don’t even need that.  Handknit socks just stay up all by themselves.  I’m a little distrusting of that too.  I loathe falling-down socks.  Ugh.  That and I guess that I myself am a little distrusting of my skills.

And how identical  do you need to make a pair of handknit socks?  Is about the same size alright or do I have to religiously count how many rows there are on each section?  I’ve worried quite a bit about this, as you might have guessed.  Fit is really the most important thing when it comes to socks, well any item of clothing I guess, although I can also do some worrying about whether or not wool socks will be itchy.  I’m not one of those paranoid people who thinks wool is itchy, full stop, by I do have major skin problems on my feet.  I’m thinking that I’ll wear them with a pair of cotton socks under.  (I have to wear two pairs in my boots anyway).

So that leaves me in this slightly nervous place: I have two socks.

Finished, completed (alright, there’s a few ends to weave in).  So what next?

I think I’m going to have to try them on.

Well, that would make sense, really.  Especially as I’ve cast on my third sock already and if the fit needs tinkering, it’ll probably be best to find out sooner rather than later.

Oh, and I think that I’ve finally become a sock knitter.  How did I get there?!

FO: It’s a Sock!

I’ve been wanting to knit a proper sock for ages.  I started with some baby socks in a DK weight yarn, which of course knitted up in no time at all.  Then I progressed to 4 ply which is what most socks are made of when I did some socks as part of that baby set I made in the summer.  There is something entirely magical about the process of crafting an actual sock from needles and yarn, I mean, you start with a tube and end with a tube and tubes were something that I always thought were going to be beyond my knitting ability.

But sometimes I guess we all fall into the trap of underestimating ourselves.  We live in a society that is paranoid about failure and it’s easy to be too scared to try something for fear of failing.  Too easy.  We need to start in childhood, to learn that life isn’t just about success, achievement and progress, that effort is not second fiddle after all and that sometimes, actually, failure is an important part of learning and growing.  In fact, sometimes failing is what makes success, it’s certainly what fuels growth.  If we don’t dare to risk then we stagnate.  Comfort zones are just that, comfortable.  But that old, saggy armchair might be comfortable to curl up in but it doesn’t do your back any good.  Do we have metaphorical spine too?  We can curl up in familiar curves and be too terrified to try something new, to take a risk.  How we do learn to take risk?  I don’t know, possibly it’s one of those things that requires jumping into deep ends after all.

The most magical part of any hand knitted sock is the heel.  How one of those can be formed from what really are just quite basic stitches and steps, well I just love simple things especially when they look deceptively complex.  Simple minds and that.

I guess we need to learn from others and to trust them too.  I don’t always quite know how the ‘magic’ of knitting works exactly but I can take a pattern and trust (most) designers to guide me on that journey, step by step.  I guess that is how we learn most things, we need teachers.  Some people do have that knack of just trying, just experimenting, just risking and they learn from themselves, they teach themselves.  But they have incredible self strength, even self confidence.  They also are likely surrounded by examples, usually positive, although negative examples can sometimes produce surprisingly positive results.  We may not need physical lessons to learn to walk, we are somehow impelled to take that physical first step, but we will have seen others walking, even our toddler brains must grasps the advantages of such locomotive powers.  We need to surround ourselves with people who build our strength and confidence, we need people from whom we can learn and grow.  It does require trust.  You have to sometimes find a bigger person’s hand to hold, to steady us, in those first steps.

I had some navy blue yarn, a sock type yarn in the usual wool and nylon blend, even though it’s labelled and marketed as 4 ply.  I haven’t worn navy blue since middle school.  Middle school wasn’t a pleasant  experience.  Not at all.  I found it remarkably difficult to have that old colour between my hands again, a colour which is forever tied to a specific period of my life.

It’s funny how not so long ago, women didn’t really wear much black.  It was always navy blue.  Black was the colour for grief, reserved only for those times of sorrow.  Women wore blue shoes, carried blue handbags and wrapped themselves in blue coats.  That changed somewhere in my childhood.  Black became the de facto colour.  Black everything, shoes, bags, coats and trousers.  And tops.  And jumpers.  If black is the colour of grief in our culture, why do we insist on wearing it so much?  What are we mourning?

After middle school, I, naturally, went to senior school where we had a black school uniform.  I don’t think I’ve worn navy in any form since then.  It was strange to have the wool between my fingers, it reminded me so much of the gansey that I wore in Year 6, the colour, the gauge, the texture.  (I always have had an independent streak, it seems.  I never wore a sweatshirt or a polo shirt, I was a jumper and tie girl).  It’s funny how a skinny piece of yarn can be so fearful.  I was loathed to cast it on and my heart ached as the rows started growing.

Why does the past have such a hold on us?  Yes, we can learn from History but we also need to find a balance, we need to know when to let go, when to move on.  If we allow the past to keeps us its in bonds, how can we claim to be the bigger, better person in a situation?  We need to loose ourselves from those bonds, we need to un-shackle ourselves and stand again.  But how do you go about doing that?  To identify that need is one thing but to do it is much harder, the past is insidious.  It can come to us in subtle ways, unbidden, a mental spectre of pain and torment, it can take the form of a thread of wool.

I think it’s not necessarily about forgetting the past, forgetting is not always possible.  But we can forgive, not exactly in the most obvious sense of pardoning wrong and wrong-doers, there are some things that will always be wrong and as such unforgivable in that way.  And pardoning should never mean making excuses.  However, we can make our peace with it, the past, our pasts.  We have to accept what has happened and accept that it is past.  That is where the strength is.  That is where we begin to lose those bonds, those shackles.  If we forgive in this way, we can go forward.  Even if we are always haunted by the most hideous of memories.  We have to draw a line someone, refuse to let those people in the past continue to affect our present.  We can choose not to continue being victims.  We can learn to walk again.

Learning to walk requires more than that single person, you have to find help and accept help.  So it is in our figurative, metaphorical, psychological lives.  We have to empower ourselves.  We have to accept that we are worthy of help then find it and accept it.  We have to decide how to reform our lives, where lines will be drawn, even how we will protect ourselves in the future.  We need to find the right people to hold our hands.

I kept knitting.  The sock grew.  And I’m glad that I kept on with it.  Navy blue is back in my life.  Even if it’s just one sock.  The colour can’t control me, it cannot make those experiences happen all over again.  It can bring old memories back but I can choose to associate it with new ones too.

I took my knitting to a party where it was mainly friends of friends.  But friends who expect me to knit in social situations and who aren’t in the least bit surprised when I do, nor are they surprised anymore that I can knit and talk.  (That’s a small but significant thing, knitting whilst your eyes are elsewhere isn’t just a party trick but it does allow you to knit more often and in more situations).  There was good food and pleasant talk, games for the children (and the not-so-young) and pub-style quizzes.  I knitted through it all, a sock slowly forming and coming to a finish in my hands.  I was called to join a team because apparently my random, erratic knowledge does become desirable in certain circumstances, after all.

I finished up the sock and just had the last few stitches on two needles.  I was facing another challenge.  In the middle of party.   A sock toe is finished often by grafting, also known as Kitchener stitch.  I have not done well with grafting in the past, it requires a sewing needle and a logical train of thought.  And coordination.  None of which am I good at.  I had to recently graft something (was it something in my lunchbox project?  I can’t remember).  I consulted the guide that appeared in the back of the Knit Now magazine.  And I got it!  I grafted whatever it was successfully.  So, I knew that I could bring my sock home and research the matter the next day.  What did I do?  I decided to it from memory.  (I have had a few moments of daring lately, it seems).  And I did!  Honestly, I grafted an entire sock toe in the midst of a particularly chaotic shoe relay (yeah, I’m telling the truth about the second part too).  I was quite chuffed with myself.  And then I cast straight back on for my second sock.  Without even having the pattern with me.

The problem is that sock yarn comes in 50 g balls.  As you might guess, a hand knit socks does not weight 25 g.  Why would it?!  No, it weighs 30 g.  How frustrating is that?!  So I had to make a decision.  How was I going to finish my second sock?

I had picked the navy blue yarn out of the bargain basket.  I don’t know if there was more than one ball of that colour, possibly not.  It was a very long time ago anyway, way before socks even became a remote possibility. I had however picked up a ball of the same yarn in a different colour.  Black.  You know, it’s pretty similar to navy blue.  Yes?  A little?  No?  OK.  Well, even I have to have some standards, I guess.  A part blue, part black sock can’t be a good look, even for me.  So what to do next?

I dared.  I bought myself another ball so I can keep knitting.  I’ll share it with you shortly.