learningishard

April 20th, 2017 by Jan

Yesterday was a finishing day.

I finished sewing a quilt, that I’m quiet happy with. I will now add it to the pile of quilts to either keep or give away.

I finished knitting a scarf, that doesn’t suck. And I finished reading a book, that for the most part was good, but could have ended sooner.

The knitted scarf has given me a bit of confidence in my quest to learn to knit. Linda sent me some lovely needles, and I used a home spun yarn. I did a knit 2, purl 2 pattern the entire way. It is warm, soft and well, like I said, it doesn’t suck.

Now, I want to knit a sweater. A simple one. I did sign up at Ravelry. I will need to spend time there looking for something easy I can try.

In the mean time… I was at the Sally Anne yesterday, and looked through the section of crafty books. In the knitting section, I saw a picture of a fairly simple sweater, exactly like I want. And though I cannot read knitting directions yet, I thought I’m teachable, so I opened the pattern to see what the knitting directions looked like.

I can’t read music either, but I can tell when the notes go up or down on the page. I know which notes are held longer than others. My brave singing teacher, did her best to help me count. But, make no mistake — I can fake it, but I cannot read music.

I thought, maybe I could figure out a simple knitting pattern, the in same way I read music. If I saw directions with a K23 or P14 and repeat… I thought perhaps, I could figure out some of the other codes, like cast on, or cast off.

So, as I was looking at this particular sweater pattern, at the Sally Anne, and before I paid the 50¢, I wanted to be really sure I could decipher at least some of the directions.

I studied and studied. Nothing. I could not make out any part of the dang thing. NOTHING! I kept looking, for anything familiar in the English language that I could grasp onto.

Is reading knitting really so different from English?

Well, it is if, by chance, you happen to pick up a sweater pattern, written in French.

I saved 50¢ yesterday.

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