The Early Days

I'm stubborn. When the boygeeks in the early days of personal computers (remember those cute little computer shops?) refused to answer my question (I only asked one before they made me angry), I taught myself how to use my first computer. Those were the DOS days so don't get the idea this was easy.

I was going to teach myself to knit. I'd been crocheting since I was this tall, how hard could this be? Twelve years later and piles of tangled, frustrated yarn in the corners of my living room, I still did not know how to knit. I had decided that once I conquered knit and purl stitches I could knit a sweater and innocently bought enough black yarn and a set of needles to do so. Ha! I don't even know where that tangled mess is today. It never became a sweater.

I used to look at patterns of beautiful things that could be knitted. I shrank from cables. I ran in fear from ssk and psso and a bunch of other strange language that wormed its way into those beautiful patterns. Back in those days there was no You Tube that you could replay a million times until you "got it." Learning some of this stuff from books was impossible for a tactile learner (I learn best by doing). It was difficult to learn it if I couldn't do it and I couldn't do it until I learned it. It was an ugly circle. I can at last thank the computer geeks I used to dislike for giving us You Tube.

I finally decided that I wasn't comfortable with knitting needles in my hands. I was used to one stick, not two. If I wanted to get comfortable I had to practice. A concept I remembered from my piano days. EEeeek! So I began to make dish cloths with cotton yarn. I still have a drawer full of those wonderfully beefy dishcloths that could attack an eggy breakfast plate without hesitation. Here's the thing: It taught me consistency and I became comfortable with knitting needles which improved my tension enormously.

So, my first Newbie advice is practice, practice, practice until it doesn't scare you any more.