Pollyanna-thinking

General Knitting
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There is, of course, nothing new under the sun, and probably nothing whatsoever new in terms of thoughts on knitting, when it comes to this excellently wonderful forum. At the risk, therefore, of reinventing the wheel (or the stitch) I wondered if a thread (ha!) on positive thinking might be fun? Maybe it is now only my generation who will take the “Pollyanna” allusion? For those who are too young to remember this story, Pollyanna showed us how to be cheerful in adversity, and also drove some of us nuts (sometimes?) with her endless ‘seeing the good in everything’, finding something to be enthusiastically positive about in life’s difficulties/problems/adversity/sorrow. It certainly made a difference to me when I was little, to ‘think Pollyanna’ whenever I might be likely to be grumpy or miserable about something.

Anyway. That’s the rather tenuous context for the title of this thread, which is really to ask if anyone out there feels really cheerful about some of the things that drive others to distraction/giving up/pain and sorrow when it comes to this tangled skein of wool that is the knitting experience. Such joys, such frustrations, such generosity, such hope, really - all the things that keep us ‘addicted’ to the small, binary wonder of a knit or a purl stitch and all that it can achieve.

So to start us off, (and I do totally appreciate that this may be the beginning and the end of this thread!), the two things that immediately leap to my mind that others often seem to find difficult/annoying/frustrating are: 1) second sock syndrome. I suffer from ‘first sock syndrome’; but by the time I get to the end of Take One, I’m REALLY happy to embark on that second sock. I’ve worked out the challenges (more or less), I’ve had a good long practice, I know the tension is ok, I’m comfortable with my colour choices and now I’m on the home strait (straight? which is it?!) with Sock One sitting beside me, my notes to hand, my guide to Take Two. Now I can relax. Most of the time!

So those are my thoughts on Pollyanna-ing my way out of second sock syndrome.

And part of this is to take up topics that others of you out there either love or hate, and to find out why, either way. I LOVE Kitchener Stitch - partly because I think it’s so clever, and it pleases me to achieve such a happy end result; partly because it usually means I’m finished once it’s accomplished (second cuff-down sock!). On the ‘hate’ front, well, there are a few things I’m really not crazy to repeat, but they can wait for another time. I’ll stop now and see if anyone else out there is interested in airing their points of view on what I see as the wonderful diversity of opinion, experience and creativity exemplified by this forum. I’m hopeful that I might find the “Pollyanna” point of some of the things that I don’t yet like, and maybe change a mind or two over the dread engendered by, say, Kitchener Stitch.

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First thing that comes to mind, purling. It’s actually fun to do. It breaks up knit, knit, knits for a change of pace. I wonder if we should teach the purl stitch first before the knit stitch. New knitters want to begin the knit stitch by putting the right needle into the stitch purlwise. Why not take advantage of that?

Thank you for starting this topic. I hope others join in.

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I’m not sure this is not a true Pollyannaism - we Brits tend to do more of a 'stiff upper lip ’ and grin and bear it rather than true optimism!! But I rather like frogging! The stress of carrying on when I know there’s an error that will obvious to me later is more than the frustration of going backwards! It’s especially satisfying when you can erase a whole project which is clearly a disaster and will never be worn! I no longer have to be confronted with the evidence!!
I have circa 50 rows on my knitting machine at the moment waiting for this attention! I love the speed of the knitting machine but it’s so much harder than hand knitting to make adjustments as you go!!

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I shall think of frogging in a whole new light, Mel61!!! Just adding to this in an ‘edit’: I too am British, so probably have the grin and bear it gene that can, sometimes, express itself. I agree, there’s something cathartic about erasing a whole project, equally something that can never satisfy if you keep on going beyond a sensible place to throw in the towel and decide that life’s too short, in Shirley Conran’s inimitable phrase, to stuff a mushroom.

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When you knit Portuguese-style purling is far the easier of the two stitches, Salmonmac, so for me, on your principle, it’s the knit stitch that’s the change of pace. But, as you say, for more ‘normal’ knitting, I do think that learning a more tricky thing before the easier version makes sense. Glad you think this might be a good topic; I’m really interested in how different we all are, and perhaps learning the things that other people actually enjoy might open up a new way to think about the bits we might fear/dread/avoid?

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:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::+1:

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Frogging means more knitting and more knitting is good. Frogging means a new beginning. I don’t make mistakes, I create learning experiences. Sometimes I wish I could just learn not to do that thing again. :rofl: Oh well, another try.

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Maths. It’s the thing many hate. I like getting stuck in to a bit of maths… and I think linked to this is swatching. Many knitters hate swatching, or skip it altogether, and for some projects it’s hardly needed. But I love a swatch!
I get satisfaction from being able to work out how many stitches will make a predetermined width and how many rows will produce the desired length.
I can be very cheerful with a page of numbers and workings out.
My biggest problem with this though is answering the questions:
How wide should it be?
How long should it be?
These questions get me in a tizz.
When I can make a sweater any width I want why can’t I decide what width I really want it to be?

I haven’t been around much the last week or two. I was taken to hospital by ambulance twice… NHS UK is not a good experience once, to do it twice is a sign of pure desperation! …I’m in a bad way with pain, immobility and the nausea, brain fog and confusion caused by the raft of medications I’m now on.
But here’s my Pollyannaism - yesterday I asked my son to bring me, ‘the knitting that’s on the needles, my note book, and my little tub,’ (little tub = stitch markers, stitch holders, pencil, tapestry needle, cable needle, row counters).
And he brought them.
And I knitted.
And I was SO glad to knit a few rows, despite the brain fog and pain, one stitch at a time knit, knit, purl, purl.
Having some thing to meditate on, something I can produce, one day it will be keep me warm and I’ll know I’m not useless.
No matter what struggles I have with knitting I am just so GLAD to have knitting.

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I like purling too, or anything that breaks from continuous knit knit knit. People in my area tend to knit the same way (yarn in right hand but thumb hnder right needle so the needle is never dropped when the yarn is thrown) which means the movement for a purl is almost identical to a knit.
I agree on teaching purling first or at least at the same time as knits.

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Yay to frogging!
About to pull out an entire sleeve. This will be a 3 or more sleeve sweater but I don’t mind. Sleeve number 2 will be a little wider and have a redesigned cap.

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Oh, Creations, what a rough time of it you seem to have been having; as a UK person myself, although I now live in Hong Kong, I watch with dismay the goings on with the NHS; and so sympathise with all that you must have been going through. Hooray, as you say, for knitting, and for your son for bringing you the necessary kit and caboodle. I agree so much with the ‘no matter the struggles…I am just so GLAD to have knitting”. I do so hope you are now feeling better? And that the meditative medicine of knitting has aided and abetted your recovery. Thoughts are with you.

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I thought I might provoke reactions both positive and negative with a short list of the positive and negative provocations I’ve felt with learning different techniques. I LOVE learning for the sake of it - I guess I am perhaps more of a ‘process’ knitter? Although I do love actually finishing the things I start…mostly! Of the major techniques I have learned I mostly do love them - mosaic, slip stitch, cables, Japanese lace, chart reading (rather than learning Japanese….which wouldn’t help anyway, would it, with Japanese instructions), double knitting, socks, hats…there are really only two techniques that I absolutely hate and they are entrelac - I don’t even like the result much - and brioche. I’ve REALLY tried on the brioche front, and I’m not too bad at it now, but I just don’t like it; I don’t like how difficult it is to tink or frog and ever know where you’ve got to, where you went wrong, how to manage the fact that it’s bound to happen again. Fisherman’s Rib seems SO much easier, though I haven’t experimented enough to know if you can achieve anything like the patterns achievable in brioche - there must be SOME reason for brioche being so loved? Do share, those of you who DO love it!! There are some yarns I don’t madly love - I prefer knitting with smaller needles, find the huge, chunky yarn and need for huge chunky needles hard on the hands. And again, I don’t entirely love the result, usually. When you start knitting the very fine yarn seems such a challenge, the time it takes to knit something with fingering weight yarn so endless; but actually I think fingering weight is easier, for me, than even DK or worsted?? That’s all I can think of at the moment in the way of likes and dislikes. I’m sure there are more!

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I’ve quite often knitted three socks, the second being so much better than the first that I’ve abandoned the first and thought of it as a glorified swatch. I don’t much mind, it’s all experience, isn’t it, and I console myself with gratitude (obviously not just on the sock front!!!) that we are not centipedes…

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Sending you virtual HUGS and they won’t hurt!

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I knit socks two at a time so they always match! I like or dislike both equally. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Not much. There’s a lot I could say about the NHS but as this is a knitting forum I’ll hold my tongue. Dogs are treated better than this.

Me too. I love learning and problem solving and I like to improve my practical skill.
I have things I want to make and my skill level is not high enough yet… but maybe one day I’ll get there. Meanwhile every project teaches me something new.

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I’ve taken to knitting socks that absolutely do not match, then I don’t get so lulled into just going for a matching colour scheme. That’s if I’m knitting for myself, which is not often - I prefer to make things for other people and am not so sure they’d necessarily share my love of the quirkily asymmetrical!! The non-matching at least gives me a chance of liking one of my feet!!!

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My son loves colour and mis matched socks.
There are single socks sold in a pack of purposely not matching pairs- they are about 2 or 3 times the price of regular matching socks!
I like it (on my son) when they have just a bit of the same colour somewhere, or a theme running through but not matching.

Mismatched socks would be very welcome here if you need me to take them off you hands (feet?)

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My daughter is OK with socks or sleeves that look like they aren’t supposed to match - there’s enough difference that it doesn’t look like whoever did it just didn’t care kind of thing. My granddaughter throws all her socks in together and pulls two out. For her life’s too short to match socks. I mostly care about how they fit and feel, I don’t want a tall sock with a short sock. If the striping is off on multicolor yarn, I don’t care much. I gave up trying to make self striping yarn on two socks match because it never works for me. There will be some section of one color that’s longer than on the other sock and it’s off for the rest of the sock. If the color distribution matters I use different colors of yarn and change them when I need to.

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Oh, I agree, I wouldn’t want one tall sock and one short sock; and I do use the same colours for both but just change around where I put them. I’ll use the cuff colour for both the cuff and the heel on both (sometimes) but vary that colour for the second sock. The ones I have just done have five colours - the same five for both socks, but distributed around differently though I’ve kept the same background colour for the pattern, just done different combinations so that the striping on the sole shares the background colour but the alternating colour varies. I just prefer to keep myself amused with the variations, and if I’m running low on a particular colour I don’t have to worry about it, just use it for a smaller section on sock two. I’ve nearly finished the ‘Ready Set Socks” mosaic ones and I think I’ll have a rest from socks now!

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