Not a knitter

Day 165

I have finally finished knitting and sewing together my cardigan, and am feeling terribly pleased with myself for being so 'green' as to recycle an old jumper, by unravelling it and knitting up a new one with the wool. Now all I have to do is the decorative band for around the hem and the bottom of the sleeves.

Have I mentioned that I don't know how to knit? Well, I know how to knit one, purl one, obviously, but everything else - casting on, decreasing, casting off - I have had to look up in a book. I've never looked at a knitting pattern before in my life, but, I figure, how hard can it be? Surely logic, intelligence and a book with some instructions should be enough.

I pick up the pattern;

Cast on 8 stitches - oh I can do that now, easy peasy, don't even have to look it up in the book anymore.
1st row. k2 - right, that means knit two, this is a doddle, don't know what I was so afraid of.
* - asterisk? What does that mean? I look all over the page for a clue and find nothing. Decide to ignore it and carry on.
yrn - yearn? Yearn for what? No, yarn - silly me. Yarn what, what am I supposed to do with it? Perhaps I have to swap it over to the other side of the needle like you do when you swap from plain to purl stitches. I try that.
P2tog - aha see, I was right, you do purl next c'os that's purl two together, which is easy to work out.
(k1, p1, k1) - why the brackets? dunno. Never mind, knit one, purl one knit one, done - now what?
all into the next stitch - shit, didn't read that part. I undo the last three stitches and try them again. Hang on - if I'm knitting them into the same stitch, do I cross the wool over like I normally would? It didn't say 'yrn' so I decide not to. Looks an unholy mess at this point.
rep from * to end - oh that's what the asterisk means, ok. I cross the wool over, purl two together and knit three into the next stitch, but it doesn't look good.
2nd row. (k3,yrn,p2tog) twice,k2 - know what I'm doing now so crack on with it. There seem to be some odd stitches on the needle that don't look like proper stitches and it's all very tight and difficult. Never mind, I persevere anyway and find I have four stitches left on the needle when I am done. WHAT?!?

I unpick it all and start again.

Cast on 8 stitches you moron - yeah, yeah, yeah, done that.
1st row. k2,*yrn,p2tog - this bit is going fine.
(k1,p1,k1) - ok right, if I cross the wool over the needle properly it looks better so I try that, even though it didn't say so - honestly, it's just laziness, why can't they write these things properly? I finish the row with a measure of confidence.
2nd row.(k3 - ok, done.
yrn,p2tog)twice - yep, got that. This is so much easier without those funny stitches from before. Got the hang of this now.
k2 - can't, sorry - no more stitches left. Gone wrong somewhere. Starting to feel a bit more humble now.

I unpick it all and start again.

Right. Third time lucky. I cast on like a seasoned veteran, then take a closer look at row one. Perhaps 'yrn' means something else. Look all through the book and, wait a minute, what's this? A glossary of knitting abbreviations. I didn't know that was there (it's a really big book, ok?).

Apparently 'yrn' means you wrap the wool around the needle in a certain way to form an extra stitch. Aha, now it all makes sense, that's why I was two stitches down. I carefully do row one, following the diagrams in the book as if my life depends on it. Rows 2 and 3(k2,(yrn,p2tog, k3)twice) seem simple now, and I'm on a roll.

4th row. Bind off two stitches - bind off ? Is that the same as cast off? I look in my newly sainted glossary and can't find 'bind off' anywhere. Sod it. I knit two stitches and slip one off over the other and hope this is correct.
knitwise - oh for God's sake speak English. What the hell is knitwise? The state of mind you get in if you're doing this properly (hey folks, I'm truly knitwise today...)? I conclude that it means I knit rather than purl those two stitches, which I did anyway so I pat myself on the back.
(so 1st remains on the RHN) - The RUH is the name of our local hospital, but I've never heard of the RHN. Right Honorable Nancy? Really Horrible Noises? Oh hang on, Right Hand Needle, got it, that makes sense. Phew. I've obviously been doing this too long. Have a twinge of concern as it's the second stitch that is still on the needle as I slipped the first one over it - I ignore this and carry on.
yrn,p2tog - I can do that.
cast off next two stitches knitwise - getting quite good at this now. I knit two stitches and pass the first one over the second,slipping it off the needle with a flourish.
(so 4 stitches are on the RHN) - hey, watch me go, man, this is whizzing along.
yrn,p2tog,k2 - all done. Fantastic. Now I just repeat those four rows until it is long enough. Simples. Back to row one.
k2,*yrn.p2tog,(k1,p1,k1)repeat - oh shit, shit, shit, what have I done now - I've got two extra stitches at the end of the row? If I carry on like this I will end up with something resembling a sling not a band. I'm starting to swear quite a lot at this point. Gone way past humble into really stupid now.

I unpick it all and start again.

By the time I figure out that I need to knit three so I can cast off two stitches each time, it has been twenty-five minutes, and my knitting is eight stitches wide and four rows long - approximately one centimetre by two and a half. This could take my whole life.

Never mind - I am now knitting it correctly, I have learnt some new skills, I have deciphered the bloody pattern and am now master of all I survey. Half an hour later I have a band that measures about six inches long and is starting to look really pretty.

I get complacent and lose my place in the pattern.

I go horribly wrong and knit two lines the same, or miss one out, I'm not sure which.

I find I cannot unpick just the last few rows with all the cast off stitches and wool winding etc.

A Scott-of-the-Antarctic "I may be some time" sort of feeling comes over me.

I unpick it all and start again........

STUFF

Day 119

Urrrgh! Feeling really rough. Bad sleep, bad dreams, chronically horrible fatigue, hormones making me tearful, etc., etc., blah, blah, blah.

So not done much thinking or sorting things out, (or anything useful, actually).

Find my brain all constipated with stupid stuff, so am knitting and watching TV and putting things off.

The knitting is a bit of an eco-wheeze. Wanted to do some, as really bored when all I can do is sit. Checked out the price of wool in John Lewis, and (after spending a happy ten minutes cooing over all the colours) decided it would just have to wait until Steve was employed again. Too expensive.

Then - aha! remembered a jumper I have with paint all up one of the sleeves. To be fair, two years as an art student means all my clothes have paint on them, but this one isn't too bad. Spent too days unravelling it and rolling the un-painted wool into balls, which I am now knitting into a smaller jumper. How's that for re-cycling!

Can't actually knit though. Got a book from the library with some patterns in it, but I'm kind of guessing what some of the instructions mean.

When I was young I had a motto which was "Just because I haven't done something before, doesn't mean that I can't". I've learnt how to do many things by just having a go, and keeping going until I get it right. In this case, however, Mystic Meg will probably be foreseeing more unravelling of wool in my future.

As I said before, have constipated brain syndrome today. Here are a few of the things cluttering it up, which I want to let go of ........

Why do famous people on the telly applaud themselves when everyone else is? Are they simple-minded? Do they suppose we think they are applauding us? It really gets on my tits.

And on what planet do people think they can go out and buy lots of 'thinks' instead of 'things'? They don't, you say. Oh yeah? - well, how come they talk about having acquired or done 'somethink' then? (and I'm talking about you, Simon Cowell).

And if you haven't been near them or done anything remotely messy, why do the inside of windows need cleaning so often?

And why don't lipsalves work for longer than ten minutes? Unless you put on so much all your hair sticks to your lips in the wind, they don't do any good at all.

And - being a tenant I know about this - why do people hang curtains so that they cover the radiator, instead of stopping just above? Why do they think I want to pay to heat the garden through the window?

And why do Dyson make vacuum cleaners that you can't do the stairs with, and why on earth did my husband buy one when I sent him out to get a completely different one? (answer, blokes love complicated looking gadgets).

My dad was a gadget freak. He loved supposedly time-saving kitchen things from those bizarre mail-order catalogues, and any that he thought sufficiently road-tested, he would pass on to us. I had a little round, brown thing that only ground nuts. It took ages to clean and didn't get used an awful lot (no shit). I refused one of those terrifying mandolins for amputating ones fingers with, however, I'm not stupid.

He liked NASA approved garlic crushers (use a knife and some salt, dad), and egg separators (what's wrong with half the shell?), and spoons that held one cups worth of tea-leaves (and half a cup of tea dust), and it all required storage somewhere, and could never be found when you wanted it. On the other hand, he was easy to buy for at Xmas.

I miss my dad. Whenever I see something like an all-in-one, sheepskin-lined sleeping bag, with two legs, a TV remote control pocket, and built-in lap tray, I think of him.

And he would never have dreamt of saying 'somethink' or applauding himself. Tidy.