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I feel like it's been a long time since I posted, but the dates say it's been less than a week. It's been a busy week. What helps when you've got a lot going on and you need to empty your head: knitting. Here's what I finished today:
(Don't look too closely at the gaps between stitches :).
Since this is mostly a writing blog, I can't help drawing parallels, of course.
1. You can knit a bunch of bad socks before you get good ones, or you can keep picking out the same sock until it comes out right. It looks like I'm the latter in both writing and knitting. Not that these are great. But they're the best I can do at this moment.
2. For your knitting to look nice overall, you need to practice individual stitches. Those are your words.
3. Tension is an issue! Hold the yarn too loosely and it won't hold the sock together. Hold it too tight and you can't move in the thing. Watch the tension and pacing in your plot.
4. A nice, tight beginning and a smooth ending are really important.
Edited to add: 5. I learned to knit in Chile (where they just show you, and don't use written patterns very much), and extended my knowledge by stumbling through US knitting books and wondering if I needed a codebreaker to figure them out. SKP? K2P3? PSSO? So now I'm in Germany and trying to figure out what the codes in the German book correspond to in English. And guess what? I found out that not only do the terms vary per language, but the actual way of knitting is physically different from country to country. My style is similar to the German style (mine is the "combination" or some such), as opposed to English, Norwegian, whatever. Which explains why the directions don't always make sense for me--I'm holding everything differently! In the end, though, I can make the finished piece look right, even the path there is different from the one the smiling English granny across the way knits. Writing moral: some people outline and some follow the subconscious outline in their heads, and it doesn't really matter, as long as you find and use the one that works best for you.
I sure hope my writing is better than my knitting. :)
(Don't look too closely at the gaps between stitches :).
Since this is mostly a writing blog, I can't help drawing parallels, of course.
1. You can knit a bunch of bad socks before you get good ones, or you can keep picking out the same sock until it comes out right. It looks like I'm the latter in both writing and knitting. Not that these are great. But they're the best I can do at this moment.
2. For your knitting to look nice overall, you need to practice individual stitches. Those are your words.
3. Tension is an issue! Hold the yarn too loosely and it won't hold the sock together. Hold it too tight and you can't move in the thing. Watch the tension and pacing in your plot.
4. A nice, tight beginning and a smooth ending are really important.
Edited to add: 5. I learned to knit in Chile (where they just show you, and don't use written patterns very much), and extended my knowledge by stumbling through US knitting books and wondering if I needed a codebreaker to figure them out. SKP? K2P3? PSSO? So now I'm in Germany and trying to figure out what the codes in the German book correspond to in English. And guess what? I found out that not only do the terms vary per language, but the actual way of knitting is physically different from country to country. My style is similar to the German style (mine is the "combination" or some such), as opposed to English, Norwegian, whatever. Which explains why the directions don't always make sense for me--I'm holding everything differently! In the end, though, I can make the finished piece look right, even the path there is different from the one the smiling English granny across the way knits. Writing moral: some people outline and some follow the subconscious outline in their heads, and it doesn't really matter, as long as you find and use the one that works best for you.
I sure hope my writing is better than my knitting. :)
