Hey Jen, Here's a Clue For Ya

So here's a touchy subject:  yarn substitution.  This is touchy because, well, to be blunt: I suck at it.  My sucking appears to know no bounds.  Except for scarves (Do scarves ever count? I mean really? ), I have yet to successfully knit a single item, large or small, in a substituted yarn. 

Remember those bins full of frogged projects I showed you the other day?  Yarn subs.  Almost all of it.

Oh the humanity!

I can't quite figure out what I'm doing wrong.  In the case of one hat, the drape wasn't right.  In the case of one sweater, the yarn was too heavy.  Other projects just didn't work.  I'm pretty sad about the Karabella Cabled Sweater, but the yarn sub may only be part of the problem.

As I've mentioned before, I'm not a yarn hoarder.  I pick my projects, then I go to my shop to find the yarn.  I usually seek help from the staff, and I think this is the root of my problem.  I can knit.  I can purl.  The physical mechanics of knitting are no problem, which is helpful since I teach myself.  However, I don't have my head around the relationship between the yarn, the tension, the weight, the pattern, etc.  I make swatches. I get gauge. But there's more to it, and I just don't get it. 

I've read and reread the section on selecting yarn in the Stitch-n-Bitch book several times.  My mind wanders, and I can't concentrate on it.  It's almost as if the whole discussion starts knitting around my brain, and all I can see are loops and string.  I can't seem to zoom out and see the bigger picture.   

Physically knitting is something that you can learn in steps when you're ready to tackle more  difficult techniques.  There are so many resources available that it's nearly impossible not to find someone or some Web site to teach you a stitch technique.  But understanding the material aspects of knitting requires that you get it all at once, no stepping blocks.  So, everything I've tried to read to gain an understanding of patterns and yarn just hit me in the head like a baseball bat.  There I sit with canaries flying around my head.

This is slowly starting to change, especially after the despair I felt over the Karabella Cable Sweater.  As a result, I spent ages making sure that the yarn I got for B's sweater will work - I even washed my swatches.  I want more than anything for his sweater to turn out.  Perhaps that's the key.  I want it bad enough.

Maybe I treat too many projects, and too much $$ yarn,  as "practicing" and not really being serious about it.  Then again, it's hard to take an iPod cozy seriously.  I see this tendency emerging with my Dreamsicle socks.  There are at least two little oddities that I could have fixed, but I didn't bother.  I say to myself, "this is my first pair of socks; they don't have to be perfect.  No one will know but me."

Yo, dude.  What kind of half-ass attitude is that?  L'Oreal says I'm worth it.  Why don't I tell myself that?   

It's The Process

Don't worry.  I'm not beating myself up over this.  It's just all part of the process.  Knitting has been a great way to get to know myself a bit better, and I'm gaining a lot of insight.  I've always been one to analyze myself, but thinking about what makes you tick is one thing.  Knitting gives me a means to break out of my not-so-positive cycles.

Yogis call our habits samskaras be they positive or negative.  Samskaras form grooves in our personality like a record.  The more we behave a certain way, the more likely we are to behave that way again.

In examining the root cause of all my failed knitting objects, I'm coming to realize that I bring a lot of arrogance to each project.  In a cavalier way I continue to overlook important basics, figuring that it will all just come together in the end.  Apparently it isn't just coming together.  So now I know, and I can break the cycle quite easily because it comes with positive reinforcements: functional finished objects.

Comments

[Heather]

It's funny how a yarn working for a certain project is so much more than gauge...I agree that it is an elusive concept.

My biggest problem seems to be calculating yarn amounts: I always end up with way too much or too little yarn for each project, never just 1/2 a ball extra. I don't get this either!

[becky]

Our approaches are very similar. Somehow I think that if a knitting project was "meant to work out" then my half-assed guesses will all come together. Except for the disappointment when it doesn't, it's all quite exciting (if a little delusional.) Every time I'm binding off I think, "Drumroll, please..." Maybe the quality of guessing isn't so much that we think "we're not worth it" but instead similar to the reasons other people bunjee jump and sky dive. It's our way of living dangerously!

[Jen]

Heather: Amen. I do that too, mostly I over estimate. I need to start swapping my left-over fodder.

Becky: I wish I could say this was living dangerously for me. I rock climb (it's how I met my husband), so I get my fair share of thrills. Unfortunately, I think my problem really is arrogance - as in, I might actually think I'm clever enough to just magically do it right.

[becky]

On the flip side, I suppose that with every exercise in knitting arrogance, comes a lesson in humility. I also often think I'm clever enough to just magically do it right. I don't know if I really think that but I keep hoping for it. I don't know if that's the same as arrogance. I do know that the disappointment and humility that follow are the same!

I think also that I would be REALLY disappointed if I followed all of the rules and it still didn't turn out. I think I'm sabotoging myself.

Jen- are you familiar with Adyashanti? I have been listening to what I understand to be his not so conventional take on meditation "True Meditation" (on my ipod). I tiptoe closer and closer to resting the mind. Knitting has helped a great deal. I think that is why I am drawn to socks. With the basic sock pattern memorized, I can rest. I don't think I've gleaned all that is possible with meditation but I do believe that when I have been able to relax my monkey mind I have felt the postive effects in other parts of my life.

I live in such a rural Pennsylvania community that thoughts and talking about knitting and/or meditation in a way that I know it makes me feel like an alien. It's nice to have a space to speak of both.

[Jen]

True true about the humility!