Thinking About Getting Into: Knitting and Crochet
I want to start over.
This is a hard thought to swallow, but it is one that often lingers at the back of my mind. More often than not, it is just that: A thought that I do not have the power to act on, as time is linear and I do not have the advantage of magic or science to revise the contents of my life. This is not the case, however, when I am knitting a blanket.
I want to start over because I have made a mistake, and more often than not, I understand where I went wrong only in the broadest of terms. I said yes to something that I should have declined, I poured my energy into a fruitless task, I focused on the unimportant things, I was judgmental, I did something to my appearance that didn’t suit me, I watched the wrong movies, I read the wrong books, I wasted my time, I didn’t work hard enough, I did something wrong. This is not the case when I am knitting a blanket.
When I am knitting a blanket, my mistake is very clear, though I often catch it late. I miscounted my stitches, usually. I dropped a loop from my needle. I wasn’t paying attention and I strayed from the pattern. There is no easy way to go back. I probably have to start over. This, while annoying, is fine.
I have completed three fiber arts projects: One crocheted sweater, one crocheted blanket, and one knitted hat. I have fully unraveled two failed knitted blankets. I am considered doing the same with a third.
I started my first completed project, the crocheted sweater, in the fall of 2019—maybe October or November. In spite of a pandemic emerging just a few months later, my speed stalled: I didn’t finish the sweater until the fall of 2021. A lot of this can be attributed to the pain of acquiring a new skill. Learning to become a beginner is a task in itself, and it takes a great deal of patience to overcome the automatic frustration that arises when your hands just won’t do what they’re asked. I wanted to have made a sweater, but I didn’t really want to make a sweater. I had to learn how to enjoy the process, as long and toilsome as it was.
A few months in, I picked up speed. I seemed to get the hang of things. While watching Emma (2020), I completed five or six striped rows of crochet. Then, the movie ended. I looked at my work. It was so bad.
The design—intended to be a stack of squiggly stripes in a wave of autumnal colors—was all wrong. I’d somehow added extra stitches, turning what was supposed to be a rectangle of crochet into a trapezoid. The layers didn’t perfectly align, so the squiggled stripes appeared flattened. I thought I was doing so well, but I’d just made a mess for myself to untangle. Resigned, I unstitched a considerable amount of the sweater. I put the project aside—I don’t remember for how long—until I could bear to face it again. Why did it seem like my hours of work always led me to dead ends?
Eventually, I finished the sweater. I kind of wish I had undone and redid other parts: the backside looks considerably worse than the front, but I wrote this off as “character.” I cringed at the thought of having wasted time doing work that yielded nothing, but the next time I had to unravel my work—while knitting a winter hat—I accepted that starting over was the only right thing to do. It looked a lot better the second time around.
There are reasons to feel pressure around a knitting or crochet project: Maybe you are making a project as a gift or you want to finish a winter accessory before cold temperatures subside—these reasons can bring a deadline into the mix. But more often than not, for me at least, it is my own internal timeline that pushes me forward. It’s what makes me feel bad for not completing X by Y age, for having invested time into things that have led me into a gray area of indecision. It is a thought process of my own terrible creation, though I know I am certainly not the only person plagued by a ceaseless, yet finite, mental hourglass.
Ultimately, I know that I will finish my knitting when I finish it—no earlier or later—and that if I try to rush it, I’ll just make it worse. I don’t want to allow myself time to learn because I feel like I should know how to do it instinctually. Then, I don’t. Then, I mess up. Then, I have to start over.
I have gotten better at the starting over, but I still usually decide to do it later than I’d like. I try to convince myself that a mistake isn’t that bad. Maybe it won’t even be noticeable. But, more often than not, mistakes build on themselves. The best option is to just try again. So I keep on trying.
How to actually get into: knitting and crochet
I feel like this very occasional newsletter should offer more service than just navel-gazing essays so now I will share my advice for people who would like to get into knitting and crochet.
I am a big fan of Wool and the Gang’s crochet and knitting kits. The brand offers very high-quality yarn, and its patterns are easy to follow. If you get stuck, you can visit its YouTube to see tutorials of every stitch, and even to get advice on what to do when you make a mistake (you can, actually, fix knitting mistakes without undoing the whole thing). I think Wool and the Gang’s selection of yarn colors and pattern designs is pretty hard to beat. The kits can be a bit costly, but they have sales fairly often, and also, when you compare the price of nice yarn, it’s not a huge difference.
What I used:
Here are the projects I have successfully completed.
Wool and the Gang’s kits come with wooden knitting needles and crochet hooks (with an add-on price), but I personally prefer metal needles. I have a large collection of them that I got from my mom, but you can certainly get them from Michael’s or any other craft store. Even a nice little local yarn shop!
Some people like using stitch counters to keep track track of their rows/stitches/etc., which can be helpful for more complicated patterns—or, honestly, just casting on (for some reason, I forget how to count during cast-on). You can also use an app. Or you can just make tally marks on a Post-It note, like I am doing for my current project (which—as you may not be surprised to learn—I just started over).