What is it about knitting? How could something (let's face it) so tedius suck you in so fast and so far? If there were a Yarnaholics Annonymous their membership would be huge. Imagine the Yarn Interventions that would be happening around the country. The Intervention Police: "You, Miss, have entirely too much yarn. Just look at those closets -- they're bursting at the seams. And what's that in your trunk? Spare yarn? You use your trunk as a yarn storage device? Oh yes, you must come with us. Immediately. We can help wean you off this addiction."Yarnaholics Everywhere: "But wait! I can't go with you now. I have yarn auctions closing on Ebay in 2 hours that I must bid on. I have a sweater to finish. That poncho -- it must be done by August. And what about my Kitty Pi?????"Since I've learned how to knit (5 months ago), 3 of my friends have also learned how to knit. And each and every one of them are as obsessed and as sucked in as I am. And that's not counting the friends who already knew how to knit. They're as nutty as the rest of us.My friend Marissa taught herself how to knit about 3 weeks ago. In addition, she also launched her own knitting blog. Granted, getting uncerimoniously dumped by her I'm-not-sure-I'm-that-into-you-whimpy-boyfriend certainly helped free up some of her time -- but she's passing up dates to knit!She came over my house on Sunday with some knitting questions. She was struggling to find a project for her Rowan Biggy Wool yarn. So I fiddled around with some stiches, combined a few things from various pattern books, and came up with a scarf pattern for her wool.The next day she wore it to work.Yes. Wore it to work. She worked on it that evening, took pictures of her pets modeling the scarf, and then wore it to work. (So what if it was 85 degrees out? It was her first completed scarf!)
It came out quite nice, too.She posted our pattern on her blog -- which you can also check out. (How nice of her to use my F-Factor rating system.) Yes. Another Yarn Freak has been born! Welcome to the club, Marissa.
My Quit and Knit theory was a little flawed.
For those of us that have to work for a living (thanks for nothing, dot com boom), Quit and Knit eventually turns into Work and No Knit.I started my new job last week. Don't get me wrong -- I love it. But with all things new -- there's a learning curve.So now when I come home from work, after dinner when I usually steal time to knit, I am faced with choices:
Tonight? The report won out...Maybe tomorrow I can get back to that poncho...
This, from a cat who sleeps all day...Harumph!
I've decided to come up with my own ratings system for knitting.
Mostly because I don't believe the current terminology of "Easy," "Intermediate" or "Expert" fully prepares the knitter for the kind of project on which they are about to embark. (See how proper that sentence was? I managed to NOT end it in a preposition.)
Therefore, I've created the F-Factor Ratings System. It's a rather simple system: How many times the knitter blurts out "Fuck!" during knitting a particular pattern determines its "F-Factor" rating*. Easy, peasy.
For example, a simple scarf with a straight garter stitch might only require one, if any, "Fuck!" mutterings while knitting the entire scarf. This scarf pattern would have an F-Factor rating of F1.
Yet a more complicated, let's say, lace patterned poncho with a pattern printed WRONG in the book, and WRONG on the errata page of the book's website, might require multiple howlings of "Fuck!" This pattern would be more likely to get an F-Factor rating of F4.
Even more interesting would be the cardigan I just finished. This was a pretty easy pattern to follow. Just a few "fucks!" could be heard throughout most of that pattern. Until...I reached the sleeves and the two sets of circular needles. The pattern then became an F5...with a bullet.
Thankfully, the pattern redeemed itself as this knitter got more accustomed to knitting with two sets of circulars. In the end, it netted out to have an F-Factor rating of about F3.
So let's review:
The fewer "fuck!" utterances during the knitting process yields a lower F-Factor rating. The more uses of "fuck!" yields a higher F-Factor rating.
Feel free to begin using this rating system. I think it's just a wee bit more realistic. Don't you?
*Or any curse word you favor.
How's this for progress? I quit my job and finished my cardigan.Oh, I'm not saying that everytime you have a sweater that's taking forever to complete that the solution is to quit your job -- but for this particular cardigan at this particular time in my life -- it worked out rather perfectly.See, this cardigan was time consuming. What with sized 7 needles and a zillion rows to knit. And my job? Well, it was boring. So I killed two birds with one stone. I quit and then had more time to knit. And finished it just in time to wear to the last-Thursday-of-the-month Knit and Wine at my LYS.Quit and knit. Could be a new craze taking over the country. Forget that stitch and bitch thing. I think I'm on to something.
It's really not crooked on the bottom. Just looks that way here...Of course, I start my new job tomorrow. And I'm not expecting it to be boring. I'm just hoping I can still find some free time to knit and blog.
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