This week, I faced up to the fact that I've been knitting incorrectly. I taught myself to knit out of drawn pictures in a book, so it is perhaps not surprising that I made some misinterpretations; however, I've been figuratively sticking my fingers in my ears and saying "la la la" instead of trying to confirm and fix the problem. The items that I've made in the past are fine; the fabric still looks nice and holds together perfectly well. It's just hard, if not impossible, to progress past the simple knit-and-purl no-pattern rectangular projects that have been my hallmark without standardizing the way I create the stitches to align with the accepted method.
But my ear-fingers days are over now. KnittingHelp.com has been invaluable in helping me track down my mistakes (a little "enter from the wrong side of the loop" here, a little "wrap from the opposite direction" there) with the use of the video library. Actually seeing the stitches being created is so much easier to understand than sketches with arrows.
And so - with corrected stitches, yesterday I took a pattern out of the "101 Ripple Stitches" book that I've had for YEARS, and finally started trying it out. You can see the results above - there's definitely some ripple there! And I'm following a real pattern, complete with "cast on in multiples of" and scary stitch abbreviations.
Having the time and energy to sit down and sort this out is one of the reasons I'm happy to be where I am right now. There are lots of little things like this that have been holding me back because I didn't have the energy to face them. I'm trying to use this time to deal with things that need fixing, so that when life returns to normal, I'm better prepared to meet it.
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