The Beloved Baby Bonnet is just about at its end. All that’s left is the blocking and the
drawstring. The blocking is supposed to come first, but I’ve been putting it
off because I need to have a place set up for it to dry properly, not an easy
task in my apartment. The drawstring, I’m actively avoiding because I don’t
quite understand what the pattern is saying in regard to its existence as an
attached piece on the hat.
(Bonnet modeled by angry Red Wings Octopus Pillow Pet)
This is what I get
for not pre-reading the finishing paragraph. I did not read this paragraph for
two reasons.
1.
I’m
not a fan of finishing.
2.
It
usually has no real bearing on how the pattern itself is knit so why preread?
(Answer: To make sure it’s understandable, so you don’t spend a month knitting
a hat only to get stumped with the finishing.)
This brings up two
key but often overlooked aspects of knitting that don’t get talked about
enough: prepping and finishing. Finishing, I’ll address in the next knitting
blog, so stay tuned.
Prepping
By this, I mean
finding all the required materials (or appropriate substitutes), swatching, and
pre-reading the pattern. These are the types of things that really help avoid
your knitting biting you in the butt later. I’m not good with the swatching
usually. I don’t have a washing machine or dryer at my disposal that a. works
100% of the time and b. doesn’t require inserting a quarter. This means I have
never washed a swatch. Not ever. I’m also fairly cheap and don’t want to buy
extra yarn unless I have to. Instead, I’ll knit a swatch, unravel it after
measurement, and reknit it as the start of the project. This is terrible,
terrible practice and I’m lucky I have yet to end up with a sweater than would
clothe only a small boat or a mouse, depending on the direction of mathematical
error. What you should do: Knit the swatch, wash the swatch, and keep swatching
until you get gage. Period. Will I ever do this? All I can say is maybe one day
I too will own a washing machine. (I’ll ignore that I could easily have at
least hand washed my swatches, because that wouldn’t give me my needed excuse.)
Finding all the
materials ahead of time and pre-reading the pattern is something I’m usually very
good about, baby bonnet incident aside. I have a feeling this has more to do
with my hatred of the act of casting on more than it does my dedication to
preparedness. Much as I love knitting, I despise casting on and this might
partially explain how I manage to avoid accumulating five hundred half-finished
projects due to startitis. Lord knows there’s enough patterns I plan to knit
eventually.
Gathering the
materials is easy enough as long as you do it. When the pattern says to have
two half-inch buttons, you should have those half inch buttons before you cast
on and you should have them in one location with all the other required
materials for the project at hand. If you don’t have any half-inch buttons, you
should go buy some and put them in that same said location (probably a bag
dedicated to the project at hand) before you start knitting. That way, you
don’t get all done, get ready to finish things up, and realize you’ll have to
wait a week before you have the free time to run out to the store to buy
buttons. And inevitably, the store will have no half-inch buttons and you’ll
have to wait another two weeks for the buttons you purchase online to arrive in
the mail. This waiting will not help anyone, least of all the project,
especially if you have a babyshower deadline in three days.
As for pre-reading
the pattern, the importance of this cannot be overstated. Not all patterns are
created equal. Not all patterns are even necessarily legible as a pattern. The
only way to know you have a good one is to read it, start to finish. You get
the added benefit of learning if the pattern requires learning a technique you
don’t know. Even better if you know you never want to learn it, because then
you know to pick another pattern before heartache has been inflicted upon you
and/or your knitting. What I like to do is take the pattern, which is often
written in a longer format that might be necessary to explain techniques and
stitches, and rewrite it in a spiral-bound notebook. Once you know the spiel,
though, you don’t need to carry six pages of techniques around, so it condenses
things to a more manageable size. What’s more, it is contained in a convenient
carrying case that will protect it and provide it some excess weight so it
doesn’t blow off your lap on a windy day at the park. Usually, with my own form
of notation, I can cull a six page pattern down to two pages. If I get tripped
up, there’s no rule that says I can’t go back and look at the original pattern,
but most of the time, it’s not necessary.
I followed all these
steps (except for the swatching) right after I received my mother bear patterns in the mail. I purchased the knit-in-the-round and the seamless
crochet versions, though I will accustom myself to the process first with the
knit pattern. I gathered my yarn, a sweet ducky yellow acrylic of indeterminate
origin that I inherited from my grandmother-in-law. I found the needles. I
contemplated what would work best for embroidering the eyes and made sure I
still had enough of it left. I double checked that I still have seventy zillion
tapestry needles (most of which were also inherited). Then, I rewrote the two-page pattern onto one page of my notebook and
spent some time contemplating some of the odd finishing techniques (what
exactly is entailed in “pinching” ears into existence? Not much by the look of
the many youtube tutorials available). As of today, I have finished ten rows of
my first mother bear. This first
one I’m doing all in one color, but it will be a happy yellow so I don’t think
the recipient will mind.
To finish up some old business, we finally got all our wedding pics a few weeks ago and here is an at-the-event shot of the veil:
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