I am knitter, hear me roar

Remember how I said I was going to knit a cardigan to go with Baby Girl’s Easter dress? Remember how I said that only a week before Easter? So of course I only finished it two days ago, which is plenty of time to go with her Easter dress…next year.

So yes, it took me a while, mostly because of the unholy trinity of knitting obstacles: lack of time, ADD, and inexperience. Trying to find time to knit was like waiting for the planets to align. And when I did find time, I still had to unravel the tangle of unfamiliar stitches and pattern abbreviations like any other newbie knitter (do what through the back loops?). And even after I had the stitches down pat, I suffered needlessly because I would get all ADD and make the most unbelievable mistakes. You know that Bible verse that says “let not the left hand know what the right is doing?” Yeah, that.

Example: My mother-in-law was visiting a few weeks ago, and I decided to sew together the front and back at the right shoulder. I had already done the left shoulder, and seaming turned out to be super-easy. So no sweat, right? Wrong. So so so wrong.

I carefully aligned the pieces, then executed a flawless three-needle bind-off with my nose about three inches from the sweater. Then after my triumphant finish, I zoomed out and realized that the front piece was backwards. As in, purl side out, stockinette side in. I could have wept.

I grimly undid the shoulder seam and started again. This time I made sure the right side was out. Another flawless three-needle bind-off: w00t. Then I realized the shoulder seam was on the wrong side. Let me explain that more fully: sewing two pieces of knitting together makes a big huge speed bump of a seam. It’s supposed to go on the inside of the project, but mine was on the outside, perched up there on the shoulder like a fat pink woolly worm. A saner woman than I would have torched the whole thing at this point, needles and all. Instead, I undid the seam–AGAIN–and did it one more time. With a rum and coke. This time I got it right, and it was 2 a.m. at that point, so there was mercifully nobody awake to see me taunting a ball of pink alpaca yarn. Okay, so maybe that was a bit much. Probably should have left out the victory dance, anyway.

I didn’t take pictures of that particular screw-up, but I just had to snap a shot or two of my next mistake. I…well, I don’t even know how to justify this. Baby Girl had a cold this past week, so I was a bit distracted with her anyway. As I was rocking her bouncy seat with my big toe, I was attempting to sew up the side and down to the end of the sleeve while simultaneously watching Training Day. I think you know where this is going, and that it is not a good place. That it is, in fact, the crafting equivalent of a dark alley in Compton.

But let me not waste words where a picture will suffice:

See what I did there? That’s the left front sewn onto the back right side. No kidding. The front right side and sleeve are both flapping around uselessly up top. But I had not come so far, only to let that sweater defeat me now. I gritted my teeth and undid the seam, which I was getting quite good at.

By that time the knitting gods must have been done laughing at me, because I had no more mishaps and was completely done the next day. Here it is, in all its glory:

Is it not nifty? It is so nifty. And soft. And the perfect size for Baby Girl. And best of all, completely finished.

Next project: SOCK WARS!!!! What’s that? Why yes, I am a masochist, thanks for asking.

I need a yarn intervention

If you’re a regular reader, you may have noticed a few mentions of my knitting project lately. So, breaking news: I’ve just learned to knit. Again. Only this time I’m kinda sorta competent, which means that friends and family are going to be getting a lot of knitty sort of things for Christmas this year. Oh yes. Be afraid.

The first time I learned to knit, I taught myself from The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Knitting and Crocheting. Trouble was, the book just made me feel like a Complete Idiot. I managed to turn out a foot-long swatch of stockinette with some of the crustiest, squeakiest acrylic yarn ever made, and maaaaan, it was ugly. Dropped, twisted stitches. Uneven gauge. It looked like two spiders got really drunk and became incontinent with Red Heart Super Saver as they waltzed.

So I gave it up as a bad job until recently. I remembered how miserable it was the first time, but I couldn’t stop staring lustfully at lovely thin drapey knitted things. I’ve been crocheting since I was 10, and crochet makes for good lace and thick scarves, but it’s rubbish for most garments. Very stiff and heavy.

A woman on a mission, I hit the Stitch n Bitch books this time, and found that their instructions were much better—they helped me discover that I’m a Continental knitter, which is often more comfortable for crocheters. But my real secret weapon was news researcher Lu-Ann Farrar.

Friends, Lu-Ann is the woman you want to hang out with if you’re a novice knitter (or if you’re about to have a baby). The woman is scary good, and she’s also a great teacher and cheerleader. I cannot be held responsible for following her around the newsroom and trying to cop a feel from her newest scarf. And not just her, either—turns out the Herald-Leader newsroom is lousy with knitters and crocheters.

So at our knitting group in January, I humbly asked someone to show me what to do, then went home to try it on my own. With a few false starts and some timely coaching from Lu-Ann, I’ve made most of a rib-knit scarf and a mammoth knitting bag. The bag is plain stockinette on circular needles, and I will probably knit on it until my fingers wear down to stumps.

The scarf would have been finished already, but I was Really Dumb and didn’t buy enough yarn. I suspected that I’d need more, but I figured I’d just run back to Michael’s if I needed another skein. Please learn from my mistake. In the week that it took me to knit to the end of the first skein, Michael’s had clearanced and sold out of the yarn I needed. Of course they did. So I had to go on eBay and pay out the nose for the one skein I need, and as cheap as I am, that really burns. As yarn coming out the nose will.

And after the scarf and bag are done? I’m determined—though terrified— to try sock-making. And some baby stuff. I bought a bunch of soft soy-blend yarn so I can make a cardigan for Baby Girl. Well, sort of. The truth is, the soy yarn was on clearance for $2 and it wasn’t until I walked out of Michael’s with 15 skeins that I began to consider what I’d actually do with it.

That may be my biggest problem as a crafter: I can’t stop buying yarn. It’s becoming a space issue. I have several huge Rubbermaid bins devoted solely to yarn, and when I say “huge”, I mean Paulie Walnuts could hide bodies in them. And they’re overflowing. Fortunately, the husband’s drums take up a great deal of space, so he can’t say much. Also, if things really get dire, drums are hollow. I wonder how many skeins of Blue Sky alpaca I could fit in a floor tom.

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For the crafters among you, give me a shout-out so I’ll know I’m not alone in my obsession. Also, please to be clicking on the cut for links to local crafting sources, great crafting websites, and bizarre knitted items, including—no kidding—two knitted music videos. You read that right.

The Christmas Crafting Hall of Shame

When a 5-year-old makes you a popsicle stick picture frame decorated with wagon wheel pasta and gaudy drips of glitter, it’s sweet and endearing. Because, you know, they made it themselves with their wee little fingers, and all for you. Aww.

However, when you’re pushing 40 and the quality of your crafting is still analogous to the Proverbial Preschool Picture Frame, then people will begin to wish you’d just bought them some toasty warm Isotoners instead of, say, the Nativity scene made from hot-glued pipe cleaners. Do not be that person.

Granted, I have received many lovely hand-crafted items for Christmas: scarves, cross-stitch samplers, decorative plates. But I have also received some homemade stuff so heinous that only my loyalty to friends and family prevents me from giving you the dirty details.

Well, maybe just the one: my ex-aunt (through marriage) got the idea one Christmas to doll up all us gals in matching shirts that she decorated herself. These shirts, they were epic. Picture: a white sweatshirt with a fat carousel pony stenciled on it it. The pony and its striped pole are colored in with gold, green, and red glitter. At the top of the pole is a green plastic jewel the size of a kumquat, with real live ribbons cascading artfully down from the bottom of that jewel. I wanted to break her BeDazzler over my knee.

I was a teenager deeply into ironic grunge fashion (oh to have those years and that body back), so you may imagine that I was willing to set myself on fire in order to avoid having to wear that shirt. My mother’s glare was more convincing, though, so I put on the stupid shirt and grimaced for the camera. I will never run for public office because I know that picture is out there somewhere, waiting to surface.

And let us not forget that kissing cousin to ugly crafts: giving people baggies of chocolate chips or mini marshmallows accompanied by a witty poem that identifies them as something like snowman poop. You know exactly what I’m talking about. There’s nothing wrong with this sort of thing as long as it is a) not intended to be a substitute for an actual gift and b) something that someone would actually want to have. But I absolutely draw the line at the Santa’s Sock poem, which requires that you bag up one of your husband’s dirty, hole-y sweatsocks and give it to someone else. On purpose. Why on Earth would you inflict such a thing on someone you presumably like? “Here, Margot, Merry Christmas! it’s a filthy sock! Because that’s how much I value our friendship.”

So if you spent the week before Christmas hot-gluing googly eyes to candy canes, and you are not an elementary school teacher? Please reconsider this course of action for next year. There are plenty of ways to give gifts that inimitable personal touch, and most of them do not require an ill-advised trip to Michael’s.

And now a reward for you faithful readers: Here under the bandwidth-friendly cut, you will find a gallery of some of the ugliest, weirdest, laziest and just plain tackiest homemade holiday crafts I could find. Some of these people are unrepentant repeat offenders and are therefore featured more than once.