Knitting and Crochet Blog Week: Improving Your Skillset 3KCBWDAY6
Today’s topic: Improving Your Skillset. How far down the road to learning your craft do you believe yourself to be? Are you comfortable with what you know or are you always striving to learn new skills and add to your knowledge base?
I would consider myself an advanced intermediate knitter. I can (obviously) design patterns, but there are still many skills I don’t know, or don’t know well.
There are a few skills I’m pretty confident about. Like complex cables:
Morgandy Mittens
Shedir
And colorwork:
an ill-fated Autumn Rose sweater
Socks (including stockings and slippers, which I prefer because they’re so much quicker!):
Cable footies from One Skein book (love!)
Stocking with short-row heel
Basic lace:
an in-progress Jordan
Kari Baby Blanket (my own pattern)
And obviously, I’m pretty good with basic sweater construction, both raglan (see my Chandail and Hipster Stripe patterns) and set-in sleeve (my Bevin pattern).
Which wraps up the list of skills I’m confident in… and brings me to the skills I’m not!
Here are a few that could be better:
1. Short rows. I’m okay at these, but they never turn out quite as I’d like them to–always a little messy or misplaced. I’ve been bookmarking alternative short-row methods for a while (shadow wraps, German short rows, Japanese short rows), and sometime when I’ve got a lot of knitting dead time (ha!) I’m going to do some mega-swatches and try them out.
2. Intarsia. I’ve done it, but it was fiddly and awful and I hated it. Here, for posterity, are the only two intarsia projects I’ve ever done:
Purple Totoro, a gift for my sister and brother-in-law
Doggie argyle
And here’s a list of things I haven’t tried at all (but want to!):
1. Steeking. Scares the crap out of me. I don’t have a sewing machine (or access to one), so I know I’ll have to figure out how to REALLY reinforce those center stitches before I dive in.
2. Complex lace. I’ve never done nupps or bobbles, never knit with beads, and never done lace patterning on both right and wrong side rows. This is more a case of not finding a pattern I’d like to knit than anything else, honestly…. I don’t wear or knit shawls (although I’m working on a design for one right now, oddly enough!), and I’m not a big fan of how most of the froofy lace stuff looks. But I’d still like to try it!
3. Crochet. I know how to single-crochet around the edges of things, but that’s about it. I would love to actually make a whole crochet project someday.
That was a fun list to create. Makes me want to go work on my shawl design, actually :-)
I’m still uncomfortable with short rows too. We can figure them out though! Also, don’t be scared of steeking, it is a lot of fun! I would recommend getting access to a sewing machine for it though.
I can’t manage steeking either – actually complex lace and crochet are out of my league too!
Steeking is one I would like to try too, but I’m scared! I look forward to seeing your shawl design, given your thoughts about them are similar to mine :)