whatifknits

With my first few rows of garter stitch, I discovered that the question “what if?” lies at the heart of knitting. At first, I was pretty much limited to two questions: 1) What if I cast on more stitches? (Actually it was “What if I ask the friend who’s getting me started to cast on more stitches for me?”) and 2) What if I use a different yarn? After two scarves, I had a few more questions: What if I use a different needle size than the label on the ball calls for? What if I knit with three yarns at once? (By then I’d realized people sometimes knit with two yarns at once, but I didn’t know if there was some sort of rule against three yarns. Never underestimate the number of things a “good girl” can worry about.)

In retrospect, these aren’t really earth-shaking questions, but the fact that I was asking questions so early on surprised me. With embroidery and more traditional sewing, I’d been content to follow patterns. I’d find a picture of a sampler or a skirt I liked, I’d purchase the pattern, follow the directions, and after a while I’d have my own copy of the original. Knitting was much less structured.

Discovering stitch dictionaries increased my “what if?” questions exponentially. Never mind that I couldn’t tell the difference between a knit and a purl stitch on my own needles. I focused on scarves to minimize complications and plunged right in. My mother was wise enough to recommend a bit of garter stitch along the edges of my scarves, and I just started choosing pictures of stitches I liked, casting on the appropriate multiples (plus six for the garters), and going for it. Even though I couldn’t see which stitch was which, patterns did emerge as the scarf started to lengthen. If I realized I’d made a mistake, I sort of held my breath, slid my knitting off the needle, grabbed the yarn and unraveled until a) I was past the mistake and b) I thought I could guess what row of the pattern I was on (though I wasn’t always right). There was absolutely no finesse involved.

To this day, I’ve followed exactly two garment patterns—one for a basic tam from One-Skein Wonders and one for a cabled hat from Cables Untangled—and my choice of both patterns stemmed from questions I was already asking myself. I chose the tam pattern because I figured it would offer a quick way to learn the proportions/stitch ratios for similar projects. I followed the cabled hat pattern because I wanted to see how Melissa Leapman handled the decreases. (Decreases will no doubt come up repeatedly here. The biggest limit to my stitch choices is usually whether I can figure out ways to maintain the pattern while decreasing/increasing.)

Other than those projects, knitting has been pure improvisation—which is what makes it so delightful. I love asking “what if?” and then knitting until I have an answer. I love the way that each project creates new questions and leads to new projects. I’m never turning back.

I’m absolutely amazed to think that within the next week there will be a blog here. My Blog—in fact. As my amazement makes clear, while I am writing this blog, I am not the technical wizard behind it—that would be my partner Melissa: artist, graphic designer, webmaster, and person who is sensible enough to know that when your partner is a knitter you’ve just got to go with it. Not only is she willing to listen to me going on and on and on about stitches/designs/fibers. In fact, she’s actually willing to expose herself to extended doses of such topics so that I can go on and on and on to the world at large.

A few quick facts about me with more to follow. I came to knitting relatively late, but honestly. Late, in that I’ve just been knitting for a few years after many years of embroidery and quilt-making. Honestly, in that I come from a long line of hard-core knitters on my mother’s side, so this knitting thing was pretty much inevitable even though I went through any number of years of utter confusion during which I found yarn itchy and uappealing. I pay my bills by teaching writing to university students, which can be rather labor-intensive (200 or so pages of essays to read every weekend), but also immensely satisfying. In fact, my students are the ones who got me knitting. They’d pull out their own projects when they got to class early, and I found myself torn between longing because I wanted to be knitting too and indignity because I didn’t know how to do it.

When I’m not teaching or knitting (which actually does happen), I’m often reading (non-fiction—I’m sure some of my non-knitting-related posts will wander off into the topics of some of these books). Between the two of us, Melissa and I are mothers to six very spoiled cats, so you can expect all sorts of stories about their adventures—particularly their eagerness to help with my knitting projects.

Next time—I’ll explain the origin of “What If Knits.” I imagine most of you are already bonafide what-if knitters whether you know it or not. I’m planning to post updates on current projects, reviews of books and fibers, original patterns—and my observations about the ecstasies and agonies that are our shared obsession—knitting.

Please let me know what you do and don’t enjoy about this site. I’d like this to be a fun place for us to gather together.