Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Picking

I'm a stubborn person.  When I set my mind at something, I'm difficult to sway.  It's the only reason I keep knitting.  It's not because I'm patient.  It's because I'm too pig-headed to know when I'm beaten.

These mittens are killing me.

I had to rip back to the ribbing because I didn't like how my cables had started with the new stitches, so I'm just sticking all the extra stitches into the middle of the cable and letting it widen itself out naturally.  It's not as though someone is really going to come along and say, "Hey, that isn't exactly what it looked like the in the movie!"  I've already tried googling them, and there is no photo evidence of Emma Watson wearing them.  I'm safe.  And far too stubborn to give them up as a bad job.

Now, I've always been an English knitter.  I attribute my inability to pick up knitting when I tried to learn as a child to the fact that the book I was using only featured Continental.  When I relearned from memory of the basic technique (stab through loop from front to back, yarn goes around needle), I unknowingly did so in classic English style.  Hey, this is easy!  Why did I have so much trouble as a wee lass?  I scoffed at Elizabeth Zimmerman's advice that Continental knitting was the way to go.  When had I ever given credence to her opinions?  The woman was clearly nuts.  Why should I knit more loosely, either?

The fact is that now my hands are sending out angry pain signals that the woman may have been right.  So I'm practicing my picking.  The good news is that I'm much better at it now than I was as a child, and I'm developing a rhythm and picking up speed.  The bad news is that I still hate it with a passion.  "Just let me knit the way I'm used to!" my fingers cry.  "Stop trying to make us learn new things!"

Sorry, girls, but I've stubbornly latched onto an idea now, and I won't give up until I'm distracted by a new one.

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