akirlu | Knitting As Compulsive Behavior (Reply)

I was down at the yarn shop the other night, browsing colors for the heck of it, while waiting for Hal to meet me there, when I overheard a beginner asking about how long it would take to do the cabled fingerless gauntlets that she was looking at. The shop assistant said something like, "If you're really dedicated to practicing, you might be able to do this in a year or so of knitting." Now, as it turns out, the woman actually wanted to know how long it would take someone who was already knitting at that level to finish the project, but ... A Year!?! Surely not. I haven't actually tackled cabling yet, but other than that, there's nothing particularly amazing about them. I suspect I would be willing to give them a go pretty soon, and I've been doing this for just a couple of months. Am I a freakishly bold beginner? Am I knitting Too Much? Are most people really that slow on the uptake?

Anyway, I have finished a couple of more things: a hat, and a sock.

I like the roll-brim effect you get if you knit stockinette from a long-tail cast on. It looks like more work than it is, because it isn't any work to get the effect at all. I didn't realize I would get the ombre self-stripe from this multicolor yarn, but I like it. The idea of using little blocks of purl stitch in a sea of knit stitch I stole off a sweater seen at JoAnne.

My first full-sized sock, which fits very nicely and looks a good deal better on my foot than it does flat like this. The toe is purple because I only have two skeins of the blue yarn and can't get another, and the first skein only lasted as far as you see here. I figured I would rather have two matching blue socks with purple toes than an all blue sock and one that was half blue and half purple. Every now and then I go for formal symmetry -- go figure.