Monday, March 16, 2009

My How I've Grown

I spent over an hour yesterday looking for a pattern, and no, I didn't find it. Recent pattern discoveries that have been purchased and printed are fairly well organized. Well, at least they're in notebooks, with a special one dedicated to socks. Older patterns, well, they're not nearly so organized. They're in a notebook, but loosely and in no apparent order--not even to me. Then there are the patterns that have not even made it into a notebook. They're stuffed into a manila folder until I can arrange them in a notebook. I've been planning to do that for quite some time now, but I just haven't gotten there yet.

While scrounging through my patterns, I was somewhat amazed at the number of patterns I have for 2-needle socks and mittens. (To be honest, I think some are repeats, understandable due to the lack of organization.) They hearken back to my days of craving to knit such items but my tediously unsuccessful attempts at using DPNs. In looking through those patterns, I seem to recall actually making very few of them. Oh, but I certainly do remember the ones I did. Mittens and socks alike, they would be fine--until I seamed them. Ugh. Puke. Now, a perfectly good knitted item looked amateurish; cripes, it looked awful, so awful, I seldom wore any of these in public (or private, for that matter). And when it came to the socks, well, can we say "uncomfortable"? No matter where I put the seam, it irritated some part of my lower extremities.

I commend the designers who tried to help those of us who are DPN "slow," but I wanted to knit items I could be proud of, that I could show off, that I could actually wear. "Why don't you just improve your seaming skills?" you might be asking. Yes, that would work, and it's something I'm still working on since not every pattern in the world is seamless. But, even if I did so, the number of 2-needle patterns for mittens, socks, and even hats is limited.

For me, the answer came via Magic Loop and 2 circs. Now, I can knit the items I want and not have to worry about a bleeding seam. I have a binder chockablock with sock patterns, and not one of them is for 2 needles. I'm free!

Still, the walk down the pattern memory lane was good for me. I've been somewhat frustrated with a recent knitting project. Many times I found myself whining that I'd never learn. This Sunday afternoon walk through 2-needle sock and mitten patterns has proved that I can learn something new. It just takes time.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm a big fan of both magic loop and 2 socks on 2 circs too. I do a lot of knitting on the go and it's a lot easier to keep your knitting on circs when you're constantly putting it in a knitting bag than it is to keep it on double points.

Oh, and less seaming? A big bonus in my opinion.

Anonymous said...

I'm with you on the seaming. Mine are always cruddy and I am constantly trying to make them better. We both need to sit down with a "seaming" book and just give in at some point!!!

As for the circulars, I'm a dpn girl for the socks!! (Sheesh - and I'm a double toilet paper roll girl too... Sorry Ida!) I just changed Wendy Knits' toe-up with circulars so I could use my dpns AND I did a turkish cast-on with two dpns. We can be so used to our ways, huh? :)