Foiled by Mittens
I really can't tell you how frustrating this is. I've been reading knitting patterns until I'm thinking in P/K/tog/MO yadda yadda...
This one simple thing that's supposed to go over your hand and keep you warm and I CANNOT figure it out. How do I add these stitches for the thumb? Should I use double pointed needles, or just two circular needles? I've made two proto-mittens that might work on someone -without- a thumb. I think they're also called hats. Oh, and they just sort of fall apart when I get to the thumb section.
But man oh man do my cables look hot?
That's a rhetorical question, because of course they look hot. There are several reasons I think this is so frustrating to me. First, knitting is making knots in yarn. That's it. And so when it's SO hard to figure out, and it seems like everyone on the entire crafty internet sheds beautiful knit mittens from their hands like wooly second skins, and THEIR mittens have actual thumbs, instead of thumb HOLES like my weirdo pirate mittens, and all their patterns are so freaking hard to read! AH!
And secondly, I feel that there's a sort of virtue in hand-crafts. Like by even wanting to learn this I'm joining a nice church lady club of friendly women who bake things and wear flats and attend barnraisings and WANT to help other people learn to knit. WRONG. Now knitting is all the rage, and a knitting club is called a 'stitch and bitch' and mitten making classes cost money. This skill that you used to learn automatically from your grandma is now a big industry and I know this is ridiculous but I feel betrayed. Knitters should be NICE, not commercial.
But no one will help me with my mitten. A kind lady from That Yarn Store in Eagle Rock tried to help me read the pattern, but I think she was as confused by the seemingly random jumble of numbers and letters on the page as me. She gave me a flyer for the pattern reading class, which, guess what, costs money. Perhaps I'm just looking at the wrong patterns.
If there's a mitten-knitter out there who could explain this to me, please let me know. I promise this will be open source knitting and I will tell everyone I know (whether they like it or not) how to knit a mitten. No charge.
you should try going to a class at the Little Knittery in Los Feliz... it's on Franklin and Vermont. i've heard their classes are free, and it looks like just a circle of a few people do it. they are all hipsterish though.. but it might be worth it.
i quit knitting once i mastered socks. and then i quit again when temperatures climbed over sixty degrees. therefore i have no reason whatsoever to learn mittens. except to help you. i can't promise anything, but i will see what i can find out.
My simple knitting mind which has only mastered the scarf and attempted a cable tells me that to make a thumb would be to make a smaller "hat" and sew it together. but that would be an ugly mitten. I share your frustration, Kate. This should be one of those things that generations should pass on. My grandmother only taught me how to thank someone for the beer in German. and it was Tex-Deutsch at that.
I haven't knitted since I was about eight myself, but my SON! recently said he wanted to learn, mostly so he could have some of the cool variegated colored yarn he saw in the fabric store when we went to buy stuff to make him a tornado costume for his second grade class play.
His birthday is next week, so I went back and bought him the yarn, and two sets of needles - one for him and one for me, and assorted other equipment that was recommended in the one book I could find on teaching children to knit that featured a mixed-gender (and multi-racial) group of children knitting.
Since we live in San Francisco, summer is a perfect time to learn how to knit warm and fuzzy things!
you could sell the mittens to sniper soldiers in the ukraine. they're all the rage in europe right now.