Improving your skillset – 3KCBWDAY6

Here is the brief for today’s post for Knitting and Crochet Blog Week:

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? Take a look at a few knitting or crochet books and have a look at some of the skills mentioned in the patterns. Can you start your amigurumi pieces with a magic circle, have you ever tried double knitting, how’s your intarsia? If you are feeling brave, make a list of some of the skills which you have not yet tried but would like to have a go at, and perhaps even set yourself a deadline of when you’d like to have tried them by.

I’ve been knitting seriously for about four years, maybe a little longer. I’ve been crocheting not-very seriously for over 20 years. I think it is fair to say that there are going to be many things that I still have left to learn.

One area that I think I’m fairly experienced at is knitting socks. I think (giving a cursory glance at my Ravelry projects) I’ve knitted 26 pairs. I’ve tried toe-up, top-down, afterthought heel, afterthought leg, short-row heels and toes, various stitch patterns, dpns, 2 circs, 2 at a time and various sorts of colourwork. There is always more to learn, but I can talk at great length about sock construction. Sometimes people even listen!

Apart from knitting socks and other small items like gloves and hats, I don’t have much experience. I’ve only knitted one adult-sized sweater/cardigan, although I have started to make plans for another.

One of the things that fascinates me about knitting is the sheer amount of different things there are to learn. This week, for my birthday, I was given a copy of The Principles of Knitting by June Hemmons Hiatt. There are more than 600 pages in there, so I reckon it is going to take a while just to read it, never mind put it all into practice. I get bored very easily doing the same thing over and over again, so having many new things to learn means that I’ll probably stay interested in knitting for many years to come.

The things that I am particularly looking at trying in the near future are:

  • Another sweater or cardigan for me, possibly from the book Knit, Swirl.
  • Design a pair of socks and learn how to write patterns
  • Brioche stitch, just because I’ve still not figured out what it is
  • I’d love to have a go at knitting a pair of socks one inside the other and that would involve learning double knitting.

Where knitting is concerned, I’ll pretty much try anything if it looks interesting and it looks like I’ll learn some stuff. Any suggestions?


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3 responses to “Improving your skillset – 3KCBWDAY6”

  1. SpinningGill avatar

    I’ve been fascinated by the idea of knitting one sock inside another for a couple of years now. But I think it would take too much chocolate! 🙂

    1. Knitter avatar
      Knitter

      You might be right, but there is only one way to find out. If chocolate supplies get critical, I’ve discovered that Green and Blacks do mail order!