It's not that there haven't been discoveries in the last year. I mean, within the first two months of knitting I discovered that I really didn't like to knit in the English style. I had taught myself to do it from a book, but someone in a yarn shop suggested I try Continental. I naturally found speed and haven't turned back.
Probably the three biggest lessons I've learned in the last couple of months have to do with tension, gauge, and blocking.
Tension first came to mind in starting the Master Hand Knitter program from The Knitting Guild Association. I discovered that I had some pretty significant striping in my flat knitting, and vowed to find a solution for it. At first I resisted trying to knit differently, but have since realized that my purling needed some major changes. Although I thought the simple act of pulling my purls a little tighter would do it, I found that I needed to change my purling and attempt to use a combined method of purling. Now, instead of wrapping the yarn over my needle, I wrap it under. This creates a very tight purled stitch, but ends up with a twisted knit stitch on the other side. I have knit differently now because each stitch is twisted. It was tough the first couple of times I tried it, but I have gained speed, and my tension has greatly improved because of it. In the end, a worthwhile discovery and a very worthwhile change.
When it comes to purling, I've become a more flexible knitter because I now know a couple of ways to knit and a couple of ways to purl. I can go just as fast with either method, and can switch when it's necessary for whatever project I'm engaged with.
The second lesson I've learned is the vital importance of swatching for gauge. Despite the ample advice on nearly every pattern and nearly every knitting reference, I was under the misconception that I was somehow immune to gauge. I must have thought my needles and fingers were somehow endowed with a magical ability to attain gauge even without testing it. I found out the hard way that I was wrong, and ended up frogging a project I had put many hours into knitting. I had knitted the project with size nine needles, stopped, swatched on size 10.5, and discovered that even on a 10.5 I will still need to go up a size to complete this project.
Lesson learned? Yes. I'm a tight knitter who may actually need to go up several needle sizes to achieve the gauge in any given pattern. I've since put the cycling aran on hold, but have started an Elizabeth Zimmermann seamless hybrid sweater based on my own gauge with the yarn and needles I selected for the pattern. I know the gauge because I made it, and when I'm done perhaps I'll have gained the confidence to go back to the cycling aran. Before going back to it, I'll be doing another swatch to test my gauge on a size 11 needle (I'm pretty confident an 11 will do it, but I'm not going to risk it without first swatching).The third recent lesson I've learned is the power of blocking. It's not that I haven't blocked before, it's that I had only been steam blocking and it wasn't getting the results I wanted. I've done plenty of samplers with plenty of yarns on plenty of needles in plenty of patterns. I had always been perplexed as to why I could never get these samplers to stay flat even though they are clearly flat in the pictures I see that come with the pattern directions. Recently (perhaps because my eyes are open to it), I've seen a lot of information on wet blocking. I finally tried it, and no more curling.
I've learned a lot of knitting in the 18 months or so since I began knitting, but these three lessons have been especially important for recent projects. I suspect that I would have eventually learned each of them in time, but believe that my work with the Master Hand Knitter program has pushed the lessons up. I've not had the advantage of knitting classes or a local guild or knitting mentor, so the Master Hand Knitter program has become my tutor. It's pushed me to be more critical of my knitting and to learn some important lessons. I think this is exactly what the program is meant to do, and I'm glad I'm learning these lessons now instead of later.
