Well I can see the end of the sweater from here. On Saturday I sat down with my knitting friends, most of whom can crochet and one of whom was willing to teach me. After talking to them and looking at the pattern, I feel reasonably reassured that there is an ending in sight. The crochet steek stitches are not going to be that much of a hurdle.
The lesson I really learned, though, is that a large number of new things to learn does not translate into an impossible task. Yeah, ok, we all know that, but to get that knowledge settled in the working part of my brain is a welcome increase of my knitting education. When I started this sweater I had no idea how to bring in a second color, or how to crochet, steek, add sleeves, cast off for a crew neck, do a sleeve gusset, or close up the shoulders. A sweater that looked undoable now doesn’t.
This is good news for other knitting projects.
I am finding that as life goes on I am more and more willing to take chances, and it is very liberating and empowering. I call it "closing your eyes and walking off the ledge," and it has worked for me over and over. I mean for the big life-changing decisions, not only little things like deciding what to knit next.
I made the madeleines and they were, in my opinion, yummy. I know everybody is going to rave about food you bring in but all I can say is that they were all gone when I left, and no, I didn’t eat them all. I tried several recipes and only one was not too eggy. These are really good, almost like little pound cakes. One recipe makes about 2 dozen standard size madeleines.
I’m making some more for a party tomorrow night (the knitters were my guinea pigs), only these will have lemon zest in them instead of orange peel as the recipe calls for. I'm also adding about half a tsp of lemon extract.
It's funny about cooking and knitting -- I feel perfectly comfortable about free substitutions of ingredients and amounts in cooking and baking, but still kind of nervous about making any changes in a knitting pattern. But to give myself a break (one of my favorite activities) I've been cooking since I was little and only knitting since February.
I didn't take pics of last Saturday's batch for the knitters but I will post one of this new batch. If I can commandeer the camera.
2 comments:
You'll have to tell me how the crochet steeks work! I have yet to try them (I can't crochet), but the times that I have seen them, they have looked very neat.
good luck!
Viktoria,
I will gladly tell you how the crochet steek works. One of the other knitters showed me on Saturday how to do the stitch and we actually worked on it together on a test piece. It doesn't look too hard and she said it will absolutly bind up the steek and keep it from unraveling.
P.S. You are one of my 3 favorite knitting blogs.
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