Knitting … or Not

You know those times when you’ve just got so much going on and you’re spreading yourself a bit thin because you don’t have enough time to spend on all the projects you have on the go and you think you should probably stop doing something or at least do something less because you just can’t do everything? You know those times? I’ve been feeling like that a little lately, to the extent that I haven’t done any of my quilt in a month or two now and so I figured the logical thing to do was to start a couple more projects and reteach myself a craft I haven’t done in about five years……

That makes sense, right? Save me?

Anyway, said craft that I haven’t done in about five years is knitting. Because with my illness I just don’t have the energy to be moving both my arms like a chicken. So I had to give it up. Before I gave it up, and I mean about a month before, I bought a massive pack of dpn needles  

They were off Amazon and were pretty cheap but there’s lots! Seriously it was a big pack these are only some of them. The smallest ones are 2.00mm the largest are 10.00mm (I’ve just looked them up and they were £6 for 15 sets) The plan was socks. I wanted to give the sock knitting thing a go. I researched loads of patterns and such but then I got too sick to knit. I did try to hold on, I kept going up thickness of yarn so that I could make things in less time/energy but it got to the stage where I couldn’t do more than a handful of stitches before my arms were aching so all these lovely packs of dpn needles just…. Sat there.

I got rid of most of my knitting things when I moved a couple of years ago but I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of the dpns because they hadn’t even been used (I also kept my set of interchangeable circular needles cos they were expensive and pretty) so I put them in a box with my yarn and crochet hooks and they came with me.

I’m going to be moving again next year and I still haven’t used them but I am a little better than I was a couple of years ago so I thought…. Maybe…. Socks?

And okay, so I’m already swamped, Christmas is coming up which will make me more busy, and also, you know, nanowrimo is currently happening so I have zero time to be doing anything new but…. Socks?

I don’t know about you but once I get an idea in my head I just can’t get rid of it until I try it and realised oh yeah, that’s why it was a bad idea.

I figured if I used my Aran yarn it would be quicker and I might actually have a chance so I picked up some needles and….. realised I had completely forgotten how to knit! Youtube to the rescue and a couple of minutes later I was refreshed in the art of knit, perl and long tail cast ons. Then to figure out how to use these dpn things….

Which actually wasn’t that hard, I was expecting to get tangled and accidentally poke myself in the eye or something but no. A little fiddly but relatively simple to use.

The thing that isn’t relatively simple for me is ribing. Knit, perl, Knit, perl, knit, knit perl, knit …. Wait a second….. I always get it wrong. My brain zones out and I mess it up.  I had split my stitches over three needles and, as it was, the first needle of stitches looked like rib the others looked more like moss stitch because I kept getting it wrong…. Also by the time I’d done this much my arms were aching from the chicken dancing. That’s about 3 rows. Sigh.

Even using Aran yarn I completely underestimated the slowness of knitting compared to crochet. Knitting is going away for another while but at least I can say I now know how to use the dozens of dpns that are in the box….

As for the other project well, I’ll get on to that next week maybe. I have some other things that need to be done right now…..

 

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