If at first you don't succeed... ask Mumsnet

So, I'm knitting quite a few squares for the Mumsnet blankets, some on behalf of other people who have donated wool. MrsKwazii's daughter liked CareBears, plus one of my donors gave me some red wool to knit with even though red wasn't on The List of Approved Colours so back to Ravelry I go, and I found this gem:

Lovely, I thought. The pattern is 'intermediate' level but, wouldn't you know, that's exactly the word I used to describe my knitting capablities just the other day to a friend. I don't have a clashing pink teacup, but otherwise it's all looking good.


Until I get to row 11. The instruction is as follows:
(K1 P1) twice. K4. yo [Sl1. K2tog. psso. (yo) twice] 6 times. Sl1. K2tog. psso. yo. K4. (P1 K1) twice.


Er, que? Who with the what now? I checked in The Book and I'm none the wiser. I just can't make this work with 37 stitches, no matter how much I want to.


I think about my experiences with the cabling pattern. And the disaster that was the last 4-way mitred square, and how that made me feel (crap, basically).
So, I ask on the blanket thread on Mumsnet and everyone is lovely, really helpful. But I'm still not getting it, quite, so they actually start another thread just to help sort me out, and so we don't derail the original thread. 
Not only do I - eventually - get to the point where I understand what I'm meant to be doing, but another member, tribpot, photographs the stages step-by-step to get us all through it and then re-writes the pattern so it's not only easier, but better, avoiding the now-named 'Yawning Chasms Caused by Double Yarn-Overs of Doom'. (Not only are they better than me at knitting, they are far, far wittier.) GleamingHeels notices - gasp! - a mistake in the original pattern as well. Beaten, and improved. Job done. And here's my finished article - by Jove, it actually looks like the original:

Team Heart has won. It wasn't easy; as trib said:

 '<mops brow again> It was brutal, man. BRUTAL.' 

But we did it. And [emotional cough] - together. 


Next: trib, my new Best Knitting Friend, is going to translate the cabled tree pattern for me. I will NOT be beaten. I CAN do this, I WILL do this. [sticks two fingers up at unclear patterns]

Practice makes imperfect

Huh. I thought if you practised something, generally speaking you got better at it, not worse.
The aim:

Ideal for one of the Mumsnet blankets I thought - simple, yet slightly different with a bit of texture. So this is what I'm aiming for, ok?








Exhibit A:

It's a bit hard to tell when the wool is so dark, but my diagonals have a twisty-turny bit that doesn't look like it's  in the original.


Plus, obviously, it's not remotely quite square. I did follow the instructions, even when they seemed to have a random 'slip one' at the start of every purl row for no good reason as far as I can see. 


(Sidebar: Make-one-purlwise is a tricky little stitch, no?)


Exhibit B:

I know. I fucking know, all right? It's even more shit than the first attempt. Just look at the tension on the twisty-turny diagonal. Those stitches are huge. And gaping. To misquote Craig Revel-Horwood 'You could drive a bus through those gaps.'


Maybe I should have used my smallest needles instead of larger ones (with this pattern you just keep increasing until you get to the length you want, which obviously happens more quickly with larger needles). Maybe I shouldn't knit when I'm tired. Maybe I need to practice more styles. 


Maybe I'm just not very good at this.


Maybe, I've reached my limit of capabilities and this is it.


I just don't know. I don't know if I'm being defeatist (stampy-foot attitude is giving way to being disheartened instead), or realist, or perhaps a bit of both. Do I frog it (technical term for saying 'fuck it' undoing it), or try and sew it tighter? Is there any point trying again with smaller needles? Could I try it without the stitch marker - would that make a difference?


If I'm continuing to crowbar my knitting-is-a-metaphor-for-life idea in, then I suppose I should try again. But I suspect I'll feel even worse if I do, and it's still crappola. 

Hoisted on my own cable-needle petard

Most of my spare time recently has been taken up with knitting for the Mumsnet blankets. I'll post about what I've done when I can be arsed later, because we've got a deadline to get them in the post.


The first blanket is for the family of a poster called WubblyBubbly, who sadly died of breast cancer just a few weeks ago. Before she died she had a sort of dream or vision, that after we die we all 

'go back to earth in a million different places to sit on top of mountains, become snow flakes and grains of sand. We become a part of earth. We really never leave.' 

Ah-ha, I thought, I could pick a pattern for a square bearing that concept in mind. I'm knitting using wool donated by another Mumsnetter in a lovely soft light green colour, which would suit a earth/trees/growing/cycle of life kind of theme. I found this pattern:

Rather lovely, no? And the intertwining could represent family, or the connectedness of all of our lives, or offshoots/ new growth (her son is five), etc. etc. All good. 


I checked in The Book - the section on cabling is less than a page. Pah, easy. I had a quick practice - my cable needle kept dropping out , but it was no big deal to shove it back in. Another skill ticked off. Let's look at this pattern then.




Teeny, tiny problem. The pattern isn't a 'k15 p8 k10' type, oh no, rather, it looks like this:

No, I haven't a fucking clue either. But hey, there's an explanation, how hard can it be? I'm an intelligent person. (Husband: 'No, you're a very intelligent person.' Not really true, but bless.)


So I started trying to write it out by hand. The first thing I notice is that there are a lot of rows, and a lot of stitches in a row. I double-check the pattern (yes, yes, I should have done this before) - it's a 9" square. Too big (we need 6" squares). So, not only do I need to translate it into KnittingBasic, I need to reduce it by a third, all over. Ok, I could trim a bit off the top, quite a bit from the trunks, a bit from the ground... not so much from the sides. Definitely not a third.


Time for a re-think. Back to my beloved but not so much today Ravelry and I found this pattern instead:

Not the whole dress, obviously, just the tree bit. Twining branches; growth; past; present; future: tick, tick, tick. It's a bit narrow this time, but no problem, I can add some at the sides - easy-peasy because that would just be plain. Little bit of cabling - I've got that sussed. 
But...

I'm angry just looking at that image. Again, I spent too long a while trying to translate it. Plus, I think there's a mistake - after knitting a few rows, it's all just bumps. There's no relief pattern. Ok, I adjust the pattern and voila! a trunk is appearing. But if that part of the pattern was wrong, what about the rest? This makes me then question what I've translated so far, so I correct.


And then undo a few rows, and re-correct, and try again. 


And again.


And then I give up in a fit of pique. I can't do it, I can't work it out, I am beaten. Cabling is NOT easy, and above all I can't translate graph patterns for toffee. [stamp of foot]


This is pretty typical of my approach to many things in life. I get a few basics down, skip the bits that look boring and jump to the parts that look more interesting. And guess what - it turns out those boring bits were perhaps quite essential, and that you have to master those FIRST before moving on. I did read the not-quite-a-page on cabling carefully, but hey! as there are entire books just on cabling on Amazon, perhaps it's not quite as simple as The Book suggests.


The stampy-foot feeling is pretty typical for me as well. It's not so much a 'But it's not MY fault' feeling as a 'Fine! FINE! Well I might as well JUST GIVE UP THEN' feeling. But... this time, I sucked it up instead. I'm not knitting this for fun. I'm not knitting this for practice, or to improve my skills, or because it's therapeutic (those are all fortunate side-effects). I'm knitting this to help - hopefully - a family who have lost someone they love, and for a little boy who will grow up without a mother. My son is five too and it's heartbreaking to think of what Wubbly's son must be going through.
So I have another look on Ravelry, and I find this:

Perfect. And in a normal pattern.


Knitting eh? It's a metaphor for life, innit.

A non-technical note on technique and tools

As I said, I'm not an expert. This is not going to be a 'how-to' blog. There must be hundreds of those already, and YouTube has lots of great tutorials. This is just my inexpert two penn'orth on the subject. 


Tools:

The Book

• The book I've been using is Stitch 'n bitch (which I'm sure should have an extra apostrophe, but that's a whole other subject, and is hereafter referred to as The Book) which I chose because a) it was a modest price b) it had good recommendations and c) I mildly chuckled at the title. (The author has also written The Happy Hooker which as a title made me chuckle more, but I don't want to learn to crochet. Yet.)
• Needles: I have only about five pairs: size 6 (never used), bamboo size 4 (because The Book said bamboo needles are ace), size 3.75 (which apparently is a continental size not stocked everywhere, but I just happened to asking about gauge in a yarn shop owned by a Swedish lady), two size 3.5 (I forgot I already had a pair) and my newest (and as yet unused) purchase - circular needles. Does that count as a pair? Ok, six pairs then.
• Other tools: I recently got rather excited in my nearest and not that good really knitting shop and purchased the following: aforementioned circular needles, stitch markers (frankly annoying; even the smallest size keeps catching on my stitches and I've actually found one or two of my daughter's smallest hair bands much easier to use), a crochet hook (as yet unused), a cable needle (as yet also unused; one of the blanket squares I'm planning on doing on commission has cabling - a new skill, rather exciting), a stitch holder (guess what, as yet unused, it looks just like a big safety pin to me) and finally a row counter. It took me far too long to work out that you push it onto the pointy end of the needle and move it all the way along [facepalm]; I've used this loads, although it always seems to be upside down. I felt like a proper knitter after buying all that. Who knows what I'll feel like when I actually use them all?

Gauge:
Now, I know patterns and The Book bang on about gauge, but I am lazy and short of attention span. And I know from my first square that I'm rather a loose knitter. So what I tend to do is just go down half a needle size (or if the pattern calls for size 4, to my continental (yes I am going to italicise every time) 3.75 needles). That seems to suffice just fine. 


Bag:
Apparently a decent knitting bag is A Good Thing to have. I use one of those crappy cloth bags that you get free with either BookStart or in this specific case, Bare Minerals make-up (love it! Give me free samples! Oh right, people actually have to read this blog.. ah well, never mind) and it's not good enough. I need something with sections, and zippy bits and... frankly I've no idea what I need. One day I will find it and then bore even myself to death by writing about it. 


Patterns:
I bloody love Ravelry. It's ace. Oh and Pinterest too - although I've only found one pattern so far that way (bootees; I'll write about that minor disaster crowning achievement tomorrow. Maybe). Just today I have created a subfolder in my bookmarks imaginatively entitled Knitting to save patterns and sites (a lot of free patterns require you to sign up to the websites). Anyway. Ravelry. Brilliant. I subdivide by: has picture (I cannot work out from the pattern alone what something should end up like), knitting (as opposed to crochet) and then FREE. Because I am cheap. There's lots of $1 or so (most links seems to be US) patterns, which of course is very reasonable, but since yarn costs so much I like to economise by using free patterns. RAVELRY!
I print out the patterns usually, or if they're short and easy I write them on a piece of A4, fold it up, throw it in said crappy knitting bag and then it gets all crumpled. Oh and in the days before my row counter I punched a hole using a needle in the paper, which didn't get messy or confusing at all, no siree.


Yarn shops:
Not that many where I live actually, and my nearest John Lewis doesn't stock yarn [wails]. But can I just wholeheartedly recommend Masons in Abingdon, which has a very Grace Brothers feel (except it's all on one floor). Actually, it  reminds me more of the shop in Through the Looking Glass (although that's apparently based on a real shop in Oxford) and, of course, it's not staffed by sheep. But it does have lots of lovely yarns. And wool. I know not all yarn is wool, but it looks like wool, ok? Can't we just call it all wool?

What's this all about?

Well... I used to knit as a child. Badly. Very badly. I knitted myself a jumper (of sorts), proudly put it on and went to show it off.

My dad's response? 'But it's got lots of holes in it.' 

I was embarrassed. I brazened it out for the rest of the day pretending that those were intentional holes, and never wore it again. I put away my needles and didn't pick them up again either.

Fastforward over twenty years, and some children of my own later, and the website forum Mumsnet organised a blanket for a member who had very sadly lost a child. Anyone who wanted to could knit a square or two, post them off, and another member kindly crocheted them together and sent the completed community blanket onto the grieving family.

My contribution was tiny, just one square:

(I'm new to this, I'm not sure how to rotate, apologies).

But I found I really enjoyed making it - partly because it was nice to be part of something that hopefully made a small difference to a family going through hell - and also because I just enjoyed the process of making something. Also, I think I have quite a short attention span and squares are perfect - you can't get bored really.

Again, I didn't knit much after that. I didn't have reason to, and I couldn't think of anything to knit (even for my children). But then, just recently I started feeling a bit anxious, and down, and I picked up my needles. And it really, really helps. 

Knitting's amazing IMHO. You pick up some yarn, two sticks, and voila - eventually - you create something. Something that wasn't there before.

It's February (just!) 2012 and just in the last two weeks another two families have also lost family members. I can't even begin to imagine what they are going through, but again I am knitting for their blankets. I'm also knitting 'on behalf' of other Mumsnetters who don't know how to knit. 

There's still a LOT of stitches I don't know. I am NOT an expert. But I'm aiming to learn more as I go along, and try out new techniques, and this blog is going to be a record of that.

I don't expect anyone to be interested in it. This blog is also therapy, and that's an end in and of itself. Maybe my children will be interested one day (I'm also planning to knit them blankets as a sort of heirloom - I'm hoping they will be finished by the time they leave home). And if anyone is inspired to pick up some needles and have a go, then great. 

Enjoy.