“Demoralizing” is not a word I use lightly; it lives in a secure lockbox and only gets to come out for special occasions. To use in a sentence: Carefully trying to recreate the Gibson Girl hairstyle is demoralizing. Or alternately: Learning to knit, as I’m now openly doing while surrounded by abnormal prodigies in this office, is demoralizing.
But pish-posh, I say. You guys have approximately 250% more confidence in my knitting future than I do, which is the OPPOSITE of demoralizing. Now I’m just afraid I’ll let you down! Regardless, I poured over all of your thoughtful comments on my last post and a few major themes emerged:
1.) The internet and its largess of educational wealth is the best thing since sliced bread.
2.) “Girl, it’s just YARN. Use some pretty stuff. Have fun with it! You’ll be fine!”
3.) Practice, practice, practice.
4.) Crocheting creates a different mindset; it’ll take time to rewire your mind for knitting.
And there you have it. My biggest mistake thus far is an essential misunderstanding of #4. In setbacks, I’ve been acting as though I’ve failed at “crocheting-with-needles”, as opposed to “knitting”. Yes, all forms of fiber crafting share some similarities and a mutually supportive community, but assuming that a crocheting background would give me an intermediate entrance into knitting is like saying, “I’m fairly adept at volleyball, so I must be decent at water polo”. There’s no gorgeous guarantee that you’ll be able to translate those skills to a different medium, and there’s certainly no way to do so without oceans of practice.
In the midst of a challenge, I really like to break momentarily and rest on my laurels. As I knit my first garbled swatch, I repetitively thought: “You can still crochet, you’re okay at crochet, you’re alright at that, you can definitely make nice crocheted scarves, you can make pretty crocheted collars”.
And indeed, I can. There’s nothing I love crocheting more than neck accessories. I’ve made the Georgette Collar more times than I can count, accumulating a rainbow assortment, misplacing them and giving them away as gifts liberally. It may have shades of regression, but paying a visit to your wheelhouse is more important than you may think; it’s confidence building, it’s enjoyable and, if nothing else, you know you’ll have some attractive product by the end. This particular version of the collar was crocheted with my beloved Full Circle (in “Latte”), because I never met a squishy, single ply yarn I didn’t like.
So, what’s in your wheelhouse? Do you also find yourself constantly bewitched back to the same items, motifs or materials? For further example, my mother has sparkle-yarn hats coming out of her ears. I’d probably die twice if I ever saw her making a pair of cream-colored socks.
