Simply Knitting

Purls of wisdom

Phil Saul talks taking on challenges!

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As a knitter, I’ve tried most of the major techniques – lacework, intarsia, Continenta­l and English-style knitting and Kitchener stitch – plus that old favourite, retrieving a dropped stitch from twenty rows down at midnight while making a gift that’s due the following day. You name it, I’ve probably tried it, then sworn at it and usually seen it through to the very end.

DON’T FEAR THE TECHNIQUE

My favourite type of knitting in the whole world, however, is stranded colourwork. Designing the motifs for a stranded piece feels a little like painting in yarn, and that’s a good feeling. Yet I’m often surprised by how many folk are wary of even attempting such colourwork. “I’d love to be able to do that. Maybe one day,” is typical of the comments that I read. And my response is generally the same, “But you can! Give it a go. What’s the worst that can happen?”

EMBRACE YOUR MISTAKES

That’s the wonderful thing about knitting. No matter how badly you mess up, you can rip back and start again. You might lose a few hours, you might mutter expletives that you weren’t even aware you knew, but ultimately, nothing terrible has happened. If your job was brain surgery, and your hobby sky-diving, then the consequenc­es of failure would be more problemati­c, but it’s not, so Õ Ài w i° ` LiV>ÕÃi v > Ì Ã] spend a fair old chunk of my online time encouragin­g nervous knitters to ÕÃÌ } v À Ì° > wÀ Li iÛiÀ Ì >Ì ÌÌ }] Ì i ` vwVÕ Ì ÌiV µÕi is the one you haven’t tried yet. Of course, it’s a good idea to practise new techniques with spare yarn before embarking on a huge heirloom project in hand-spun silk, but ultimately, you can do this. Yes, you!

YOU CAN DO IT TOO

But please don’t think that I haven’t felt that anxiety. I do remember as a less experience­d knitter, admiring other people’s work and thinking, “Obviously, I could never do that.” But in every case, once I eventually got round to trying, I discovered that actually, I could do that. And – in most cases – it wasn’t i>À >à ` vwVÕ Ì >Ã Ì i`° ` iÃ] I do know that most of us have a least favourite technique that we’d rather avoid. I’ve written before in this column about my own rocky relationsh­ip with intarsia. But that doesn’t mean that we couldn’t master those techniques if something important – such as our yarn stash – depended on it. The real ÃÃÕi à i v V w`i Vi° 7i Ãii something beautiful that someone else has knitted, and it seems almost magical that a thing this perfect has been created. That can be intimidati­ng. We don’t see the fact that it was created in exactly the same way as every other knitted project in the history of yarn; by making loop after loop (after loop) in some string using a pair of pointy sticks. Put like that, it doesn’t sound quite so tricky, does it?

GO ON, MAKE THAT THING - v Õ Ài y V } Ì À Õ} Ì Ã magazine and you fall in love with one of the patterns, but you think Ì >Ì Ì Ã Ì ` vwVÕ Ì v À Õ] Ì i Ì Ã your thinking that needs to stop, not your knitting! You might need a few tips from friends or the internet, but ultimately, if you have the ability to wind some yarn around a pair of needles, then you can make this thing. You really can. Enjoy!

Visit Phil’s award-winning blog at www.thetwisted­yarn.com for inspiring tutorials and patterns to try.

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