Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Knitting and Accomplishment

Posted by Laura / 2 comments » / , crafts, website

When I started working at my first call center in late 2005, I found myself at a loss as to what to do with my hands and feet and my constant need to fidget. I came from retail and wasn’t used to sitting except on lunch and breaks, let alone for eight hours a day. I don’t remember what put it into my head, but I decided that it might be a good idea to learn to crochet. So, during training, when I finished my segments for the day before others did, I would experiment with crochet. It didn’t take me very long to realize that I was really, really bad at crocheting – not even in a beginner kind of way. I  was just bad at it. I decided to try out knitting instead. I swiped a book kit from my mom and started teaching myself. I know learning to knit was partially motivated by my interest in making my own Hufflepuff scarf in the style of the scarves in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. With a little help from someone that I worked with, I caught on to the basic knit and purl fairly quickly.

Once I got down the basics of knitting, I decided to tackle knitting in the round. I couldn’t tell you why I decided to jump into that first. In the course of about a month, I knitted a whole scarf in Slytherin for my brother, just by knitting it while I was at work. I later ended up frogging it because it was far too wide and thick to be useable as anything, let alone a scarf. At some point after I finished it, I blindly quit that job with no immediate opportunities presenting themselves afterward, so I kind of lost sight of my knitting for a while. I didn’t do much by the way of productive knitting, as my brother’s scarf sat idle and the yarn that I had ordered for my own Hufflepuff scarf stayed in its packaging.

When I went on vacation in late August of 2006, I started on my Hufflepuff scarf for good, and got about a quarter of the way to finished, then laid it aside. I’ve since managed to get it to about 50% of the way completed, but again lost interest in it some time ago. It seems that working full time at a job where I can’t knit at work and knitting do not go well together!

Well, thanks to my recent change in employment status (something I haven’t told many people about yet, sorry – it’s not exactly something one shouts from the rooftops!), I found myself with more time on my hands. Since I’ve been used to doing things for nine hours straight five days a week, I didn’t really know what to do with myself at first. I pulled up Ravelry (friend me?) on a whim and was reminded of all of the patterns that I’d bookmarked and drooled over, but never gotten around to making. I started on the Matilda Scarf, just trying it out, on Monday, June 1, as something to do in between the chores around the apartment. On Tuesday, I tore it apart and started over again. I made such good progress on it that I decided that I would pursue it to completion. I hadn’t decided what to do with it, but it occurred to me that my mother-in-law’s birthday was coming up and neither Johnathan nor I had done anything for her by way of a gift. Aha! A purpose!

Well, I knitted like crazy through Wednesday and Thursday, trying to get it done as quickly as possible. I ran into a lot of issues – I’d drop a stitch and not notice right away, or cross my cables the wrong direction. There was a lot of swearing, a lot of grumbling and I’ll admit I thought about ripping the whole thing out more than once. By Saturday, I had about three feet knitted up, and instead of helping make pierogis (our reason for going over that day), I knitted some more.

It took me until about 10:30PM yesterday, but I finally did my very first bind-off on a knitted project. I did 7.5 feet of cables with 2.5 skeins of yarn (Caron Simply Soft Eco in Ocean – I really like it!) in one week. I can tell you I don’t think I’ll be tackling something like this again for a little while, simply because it is a lot of work to do so much cabling on one scarf, but I definitely want to do another one. Maybe even one for myself! The way it looks when finished is simply lovely, and I like the weight of it. It’s a fantastic scarf for a colder climate. And damn, isn’t it stunning!

I can tell this is the start of something good. I took today off of doing any knitting, but tomorrow I’m going to start on something else – another gift. It will be a little bit late, but I think it will be appreciated nevertheless. I’m exciting. I have something to do which gives me a sense of accomplishment. I am a maker. That works for me!

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