An exercise of will, part 2

[darkemeralds]

Today I'm knitting. Knitting is part of my Big Plan For Self-Improvement In 2012.

It's taken years, but I've finally accepted that "self-improvement" doesn't mean changing what I am. It means being better at what I am.

Well, what I am, among other things, is a craftswoman, and I like knitting. So I've decided that 2012 is the year I become as good a knitter in reality as I am in my imagination



I've defined four knitting skills* I want to master, and four big projects** that those skills will help me achieve this year.



My first proving ground is an Aran-style cardigan, which I started in November. Last night I finished the second sleeve, and this morning I looked at those sleeves in the proverbial cold light of day.

It wasn't a happy moment.

I told myself some stories about how I could make them work. Tight forearms could be a style statement...yeah! Nobody will notice the weird leg-o'mutton line of the shoulder...right?

I argued with myself for fifteen minutes before I finally admitted that the sleeves were simply wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. A month's worth of knitting, wasted.



In The Practicing Mind, Thomas Sterner proposes a simple model for any practice, drawn from Buddhist tradition: Do, Observe, Correct.

Well, I'd Done, and, like most hurried Westerners, I was about to Re-Do. I always just Re-Do. It is the slowest, most inefficient way to improve at anything, but it's the way our entire society seems to favor. "Again! Repeat! Go-go-go!" We hurry to do it wrong one more time. Only the naturally gifted move ahead, while we sacrifice loads of potential talent on the altar of haste.

Just as I was about to start ripping those sleeves out, something went *ping*. It said, "Slow down. You're about to make the same mistakes again."

So before I raveled a single stitch, I Observed. I checked my math and found my error. I measured everything again. I acknowledged a second problem with the sleeves that I'd been ignoring. I photographed, annotated, and Evernoted. I updated my written pattern.

Then I ripped the sleeves back to the shoulders and started them all over again.

This time, all the uncertainty and wild-ass guesswork of the careless first Doing are gone. This is Correction, and I know it, and so the work is calmer, more confident, more regular. Faster, even. It's better.

I think I'm beginning to understand these magical people who consistently produce high-quality work without angst. I think I might be able to become one of them.

It's about time.

*matching increases and decreases, Kitchener grafting and bind-off, short-row shaping, top-down raglan shoulders

**Two cardigans, a jacket, and possibly a pullover.

Comments

[darkemeralds]

My good pal and knitting friend vampirefan also learned to knit in Mexico, and she calls her style "combined." It's exactly like my style (well, mirror-imaged), and I learned to knit in France from a German girl. I've heard my style called "hooking" and "Continental" and "German." Is that what you mean by Eastern style? Where you hook the yarn through with your working (right) needle, and your left hand just tensions the yarn?

In any case I know what you mean about the difference. I look at most American knitting videos and just go, "Huh?" I can't feel any relationship between what I'm seeing on the screen and what my hands do--which is why most knitting videos aren't very useful to me.

And yet the knitting itself comes out looking the same.

Are you familiar with TechKnitting? Great blog, very technical, very inspiring. This post on tubular bind-off (using her own interesting take on Kitchener) is really good.

[jumpuphigh]

It is continental style but the actual creation of the stitches is different. Ignoring the bit about slipping the first stitch, this video shows my normal knit stitch and this video shows my normal perl stitch.

I have TechKnitting bookmarked on my computer. :)

[darkemeralds]

OMG THAT'S IT! That is EXACTLY how I knit (except mirrored, of course).

I've never heard it called Russian style before, but yup, that's me knitting, right there, in a mirror. Cool!

vampirefan pointed out that this style of knitting reverses the angle of increases and decreases from what's on the label--your standard left-slanting decrease will slant right, and vice-versa. This solved a major mystery for me: as a left-handed "Russian" knitter, my decreases come out as per the standard label. Who knew??? I was tying my brain in knots trying to figure out why my careful reversal of decrease instructions was resulting in such a mess.

Thanks for the videos. They're somehow really validating. :D

[jumpuphigh]

*brushes hands together* My work here is done. :D

Oh, yes, knitting in this style does weird things to decreases and it makes finding good instructions on how to do things like knit into the front and back of the stitch a real challenge. I've never met anyone in the US who knits like me so it's awesome to have someone else. Feel free to yell my way if you are having problems translating American style into your style. I've done a lot of the heavy lifting here.

The day I encountered this style of making a stitch in a library book, I nearly cried because I felt so validated. It's technically called Eastern Uncrossed. There is an Eastern Crossed as well.

If you want to see a really wild way of knitting and purling, watch this video.

[darkemeralds]

*blinks*

Wow. That's really different. Watching her fly along with k2-p2 rib is impressive.

I will definitely come back to you with translation questions if I run across them. This is great. Thank you!

[jumpuphigh]

Watching her knit makes my head hurt. I do find it so interesting how different ways of making the same stitches evolved in different locations.