Knitting & Crochet Blog Week - Day 6

Improving Your Skill set

How far down the road to learning your craft do you believe yourself to be? Are you comfortable with what you know or are you always striving to learn new skills and add to your knowledge base? Take a look at a few knitting or crochet books and have a look at some of the skills mentioned in the patterns. Can you start your amigurumi pieces with a magic circle, have you ever tried double knitting, how's your intarsia? If you are feeling brave, make a list of some of the skills which you have not yet tried but would like to have a go at, and perhaps even set yourself a deadline of when you'd like to have tried them by.
3KCBWDAY6

 

Hmmmmm, I guess I would consider myself an average standard knitter, in the sense I am comfortable knitting a wide range of items but know there is an abundance of new techniques out there to lure me in.  I can knit a regular sock pattern pretty much with my eyes closed and over the last year have enjoyed trying out some new patterns which feature lace knitting.  I always forget with yarn overs and purls next to each other in a pattern that you have to do an extra loop, but that's usually remedied and remembered on the next row when I realise I'm one stitch short of a pretty pattern :-)

So I decided it was high time I tried a toe-up sock with a provisional cast-on.  Here you have to make a crochet chain, pick up stitches knitting on the flat

and then by way of a few handy knitting stitches it takes the shape of a toe!  Quite clever and a little fiddly at first but I shall persevere!

These are slowly turning into my Pippie ripples which I'm knitting for the April Knit-a-long on the UK Sock Knitters Ravelry Group.  As well as being new to toe-up socks, there's also short row toes and heels to challenge my little brain. 

But I love learning new stuff, so its all good.  A bit more taxing than my knitting easy socks in the car or on the train round and round.

What I sometimes fail to take into consideration is the effect my knitting has on others.  It seems OH finds it quite relaxing having me knit away at my much loved socks (especially on the rare occasion he is the lucky recipient), but apparently my mood often changes when I am trying something more challenging like a lace shawl.  It seems I can become quite a grump!  Along the way I have discovered I much prefer the triangular shawls which start with just a few stitches and grow as you knit.  Casting on 300 plus stitches and trying to keep to a pattern, so far has just not been my thing.  Perhaps I need to add that to the "to-do-list" when I'm stuck on a desert island with little else to concentrate on!