Embarrassment
I thought I would take a moment and tell you all about one of my major hobbies besides gardening, especially since it will soon be dominating what I talk about here. It's still cold, and the post-summer drear has settled in. There are rumors of 80 degree weather, but I'm not sure I believe them.
ANYWAY.
I knit. This is what I was doing in the middle of the summer when it was too hot to go outside and play in the dirt:
When finished that is the Serenity blanket. The subtitle is "I am a Leaf on the Wind" and if you don't know what that means, you need to go straight to Hulu or Netflix or more morally ambiguous sources and find the greatest Sci Fi tv show ever created, Firefly. Expect to spend the weekend watching it.
Anyway- it was a significant project for me, because it was my first major expedition into the jungle of lace. It's nothing fancy to lace knitters, but knitting cables in the round, and looking up completely new stitch abbreviations. It took a little over a month to do, and I'm very proud of it.
I recently went to Joann's (Knitting haters be hatin') and picked out some yarn for my next project, my first sock. About a month ago I picked up a set of Bates sock knitting needles.
Like a good knitting girl, I set out to knit a swatch. And as usually happens when I try to be good I got about a quarter of the way through it and said "Well I know what my gauge is now, why would I keep going?" Long story short, wrong needle size for pattern. So I started out on a different pattern.
This pattern called for a twisted rib, which I had heard of, but didn't know how to do. I looked at the first row of the pattern, "*ktbl (knit through the back loop), p (purl) repeat from * to end of row." Okay, I can handle that. I've knit through the back loop before. So I knit a quick row. I look at the next row's instructions "*k, ptbl (I'll let you work that out on your own) repeat from * to end of row." And I thought "But don't you always purl through the back loop?"
That was when I found out I've been purling wrong for six years.
While all of the knitters reading this collapse in a fit of giggles, I'll explain to the rest of you. You know how in grade school you learn how to write your capital letters and when you've mastered that you move on to lowercase? For you pre-2005 high school seniors, here's an SAT question for you:
Uppercase letters are to knitting as Lowercase letters are to?
Purling.
That's right, I flunked the first grade of knitting. The first thing I did was to post to my aunt's facebook page. She's my mentor knitter, even though she lives three states away. I told her about my mistake and how embarrassed I was. She told me she couldn't stop laughing. Thanks, Aunt Betty.
The next thing I had to do, as if feeling stupid wasn't enough, was to inform the people who quite possibly learned to purl FROM me, that they had in fact been led astray.
And now, I confess to you, the interwebs, to finish off my knitting walk of shame.
ANYWAY.
I knit. This is what I was doing in the middle of the summer when it was too hot to go outside and play in the dirt:
Anyway- it was a significant project for me, because it was my first major expedition into the jungle of lace. It's nothing fancy to lace knitters, but knitting cables in the round, and looking up completely new stitch abbreviations. It took a little over a month to do, and I'm very proud of it.
I recently went to Joann's (Knitting haters be hatin') and picked out some yarn for my next project, my first sock. About a month ago I picked up a set of Bates sock knitting needles.
Like a good knitting girl, I set out to knit a swatch. And as usually happens when I try to be good I got about a quarter of the way through it and said "Well I know what my gauge is now, why would I keep going?" Long story short, wrong needle size for pattern. So I started out on a different pattern.
This pattern called for a twisted rib, which I had heard of, but didn't know how to do. I looked at the first row of the pattern, "*ktbl (knit through the back loop), p (purl) repeat from * to end of row." Okay, I can handle that. I've knit through the back loop before. So I knit a quick row. I look at the next row's instructions "*k, ptbl (I'll let you work that out on your own) repeat from * to end of row." And I thought "But don't you always purl through the back loop?"
That was when I found out I've been purling wrong for six years.
While all of the knitters reading this collapse in a fit of giggles, I'll explain to the rest of you. You know how in grade school you learn how to write your capital letters and when you've mastered that you move on to lowercase? For you pre-2005 high school seniors, here's an SAT question for you:
Uppercase letters are to knitting as Lowercase letters are to?
Purling.
That's right, I flunked the first grade of knitting. The first thing I did was to post to my aunt's facebook page. She's my mentor knitter, even though she lives three states away. I told her about my mistake and how embarrassed I was. She told me she couldn't stop laughing. Thanks, Aunt Betty.
The next thing I had to do, as if feeling stupid wasn't enough, was to inform the people who quite possibly learned to purl FROM me, that they had in fact been led astray.
And now, I confess to you, the interwebs, to finish off my knitting walk of shame.
Excellent! I have knit about three things, under the careful eyes of my wife who is a more experienced knitter ... but I'm pretty sure I remember being corrected on this repeatedly.
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