The Humble Hobbyist vol.2
Knitting -- the hobby that humbled me.
Piano
Happy 1-year pianoversary to me 🥳 !
The year has NOT always been fun. In fact, I told my instructor that piano isn’t my favorite thing but that I haven’t been playing long enough to quit. For a while, I was in my head about “not making progress fast enough,” but that’s relative. Once I stopped comparing myself to others and just focused on the learning process, I was able to enjoy practice again.
You won’t love every hobby that you try BUT you owe it to yourself to give it your best.
Cheers to showing up anyway!
Song: “Jazz Jig” by Phillip Keveren
Sewing
Q: How will folks know when garments are made by me?
A: Custom fabric tags designed by my wife 😍
I have been itching to share these with y’all since the last newsletter, ahhhh!!! 💃🏽💃🏽💃🏽
Do these look amazing? Or do they look amazing? Yes, yes I know! They shall be sewn into all of my me-made garments henceforth.
Knitting
Listen…knitting almost brought me to tears. Real tears.
As if I haven’t amassed enough hobbies, I decided to add knitting to the mix. I watched countless YouTube tutorials then searched high and low for beginner patterns before landing on one called “The Beginner Socks.”
Beginner where!?!?
Likeeeee after you cast on (aka start) the stitches what do you do!? This seems super basic but I quickly realized I had no idea “how to knit.” How do you hold the yarn and needles? Why are there so many needles? How do you make the designs?
Basically, I got the hang of casting on then everything went downhill 🤷🏽♀️.
Casting on using the German Twisted method:
Over a weekend I practiced knitting 3 days in a row for a total of 15 hours. I scrapped my work and started over too many times. My spirit was crushed because I could visually see how poorly I was doing when the design on my sock wasn’t coming out properly 😔.
What was going wrong:
Tension — inconsistently holding the yarn too tight or too loose
Stitches — accidentally picking up (adding) or dropping (subtracting) stitches
Knitting patterns are meticulously designed so if you leave a mistake uncorrected then it throws subsequent stitches out of whack (i.e., the photo on the right). One only learns how to identify and correct mistakes if you’ve been at it a while, which I obviously hadn’t been.
Turns out I wasn’t starting as “beginner” as I thought but rapid failure was the best teacher. For now, I’ll table the socks and try a simpler first project so that I don’t sour to knitting forever. I’m determined to knit a sweater by winter some how, some way.
Here’s the thing about YouTube University — you curate your own syllabus. You don’t know what you don’t know and tutorials make a lot of assumptions. With every video you’ll pick up something new until you’ve got what you need, but be prepared to kiss a lot of frogs.
What I learned: Don’t be afraid to start over if the quality of your work will be better. There’s no rush. Slowing down is why I started any of this in the first place.
🧶
Another hobby, another humbling experience.
I know you didn’t think this newsletter would only be about wins, right!?
✌🏾,
TGM
Thank you for reading...again! Yep, the fabric tags will be in your linen towels 😂.
Knitting is challenging, I cannot deny that at all! I’ve been making good progress though and can’t wait to share in the next newsletter 😊
yay! Fellow fiber crafter here, my craft has been crochet for about 13 years because I couldn’t get the hang of knitting. In case you haven’t seen it yet, I’ve found ravelry dot com to be a good resource for free, well-tested patterns. It’s a whole community with good & bad folks, but I just take what I can use and leave the rest. Anyway I look forward to your knitting journey here!