Sartorial Sundays
Knitting Patterns are quite literally another language that you have to translate in order to use. Well, maybe not literally... it's more of a short hand language that you have to get the hang of. When I was little, like in 6th grade or so, we went on a tour of our local court house, a hideous blue building with this weird light fixture outside that made it look like a death ray. I also think they showed us the holding cells... now that I think about this, how weird, and also, was my Catholic school trying to intimidate me? What I thought was totally awesome is my classmate Ryan's mom did Stenography. I thought it was so cool to see her type so wickedly fast and have all these weird symbols and stuff that looked like hieroglyphics actually be words. Why this recollection when talking about knitting patterns? That's what a knitting pattern is, weird shorthand that you have to translate into something real.
I always start my projects by reading the pattern thoroughly and usually writing it out longhand. For years I've thought it odd that books don't just write it all out, but then again, think of the paper saved and I'm sure there are those out there who can read it and it all translates in their head. Not there yet... perhaps one day. So, I'm starting with only doing the Sontag aka funny weird shawl first. Because I want to see how low it comes on my arm and then adjust or choose my wristband patterns based on that. Also, I might just fly by the seat of my pants and make up the pattern instead...
For me I started knitting when I was very very young. But for years all I could do was scarves, which resulted in tons and tons of scarves for everyone I know. Then once I started to learn to read patterns and design patterns, I thought how fun knitting is. I've done a few sweaters, but I'm always afraid to wear them. Therefore I stick to accessories; hats, scarves, gloves, and this pattern looks just up my alley. So, for the Sontag I'm using Kay's Tess D'Uberville Shawl, which if you want to you can get over on Kay's website, Natural State Knitting, it's under designs on the left hand side. This is a fairly straight forward pattern, I will cast on 5 stitches, and I keep increasing and increasing till I end up with 305 stitches... man, that is a whole heck of a lot of stitches!
Now that I have read the nice and easy pattern, it's time for me to go yarn shopping! What I will find is anyone's guess, but hopefully it won't be too expensive and everything will turn out as planned. Fingers crossed, next week: YARN!
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