'Round about 5 years ago, I found a post on Purl Soho's blog for a simple knitted hat. I did not know how to knit at all, but I wanted to make that damn hat.
I figured my years of crocheting would somehow power me through a knitting marathon and I could whip out a family of hats in a weekend.
But similarly to how I cannot successfully complete a ballet class after years of ballroom training, I could not knit this. damn. hat.
I bought all the yarn, the needles (the double pointed things!), and well, just those two things, and got to work. But the whole knitting in a circle bit was confusing and it wasn't looking right.
After a couple tries, I stopped. Gave up. Said, "Knitting is not for me!" with great finality.
But these hats were haunting me. Apparently, I subscribed to Purl Soho's mailing list, so I'd get updated versions of this same hat every year or so: New Colorways! With Monograms! You Can Do It!
This winter, in another effort to embrace koselig and in an attempt to somewhat brand my children, the hat plan came back.
With the website pulled up on my phone, I marched into the fancy yarn store (the Yarnery, for you locals) and announced, "I need to make this."
The quite tall, distinguished, bearded gentleman working looked at my screen and pointed me to the correct yarn. Once I'd picked up one skein (I wasn't all in mentally at this point, despite my confidence and location), I admitted my very rough knowledge of knitting and asked what else I needed (AKA, "please help me pick out the right needles from the 15 different kinds offered and tell me what class I need to sign up for").
The awesome guy handed me the "needles he would use", gave me the lowdown on all the classes offered (including private lessons), told me about some "magic loop" method that's "really easy", and also wrote down his favorite YouTube knitting channel (KnitFreedom, thank you!).
That night, I loaded up the YouTubes, watched three different videos (how to cast on, how to do the magic loop business, and how to purl), and started up. And then kept going.
And then, a few days later... I finished! But wait...
As the Sesame Street song goes, one of these things is not like the other. The hat I had just finished is on the left, my final product is on the right. It was kind of bell shaped and... not The Hat.
Back to YouTube to watch a tutorial on "how to knit". Yes, maybe I should have watched that one in the first place.
I had done something a little wonky on that first one, and while it was fine, I wanted that damn hat I had found five years ago.
I started again and this time it worked.
It worked six more times, too!
Life lesson [from knitting? YES, life lessons come from the coolest places):
It wasn't very fun to
a) admit defeat at something I wanted
b) be a beginner walking into a place where everyone seems to be an expert (and possibly is)
c) start over because I didn't have the correct information the first time around
It IS very fun to
a) complete a long-awaited goal
b) learn from my mistakes
c) give someone a handmade gift that they like
d) attain a new skill
What'd you learn in 2017? And more importantly, WHAT WILL YOU LEARN THIS YEAR?