Sticks and String

So, I tried a hard thing today, at least hard for me. I took a class with Jessica at Two Sisters and Ewe to learn how to knit socks.

I guess I got cocky. After my triumphant scarf experience back in February followed by a slightly less triumphant but ultimately successful hat experience in March, I figured I was ready for socks. How hard could it be? I mean, there are two of them, granted, but they don't look that complicated. You just need a cyclinder and a place for your toes, right? Maybe a place for your heels? Piece o' cake.

Jessica is already a pro at everything except maybe socks. Which is probably why she didn't start freaking out when I did, which was when I sat down at the table. In front of me (courtesy of Jessica's generosity and cornucopian stash) was a skein of "sock yarn," very pretty multi-colored stuff about the width of fishing twine. Okay. Next to it was a plastic packet of bamboo skewers, the kind I use for making Chicken Satay on the grill. Only it turns out they were actually knitting needles, and that I was going to be knitting with all five of them. At the same time.

Our teacher, Nadia, was adorable. She was sort of Goth and wore a knitted headscarf around her dyed-black hair that she probably made herself. "Let's start by casting on 48 stitches," she began. "Use a long-tail cast-on." A what now? Turns out my "cheap and dirty" finger wrap cast-on has been expedient but will not be the sum total of my cast-on education. She "demonstrated" how to pinch the yarn like a harp string between thumb and index finger, fling my hand open like a jazz dancer, and then swoop the whole thing downwards like a bird. Only then was I to begin jabbing one of the sticks hither and yon, in the hope that it would result in stitches on my needle.

I began to sweat and shake. That is par for the course when I learn something new. Nadia seemed a bit agog at my rudimentary skills, but she was polite. By some miracle, I figured it out, and managed to cast on my 48 stitches. Then she showed me how to "slip" the stitches onto the other sticks, 12 each until I had four, and then bind the whole thing together like a God's Eye from camp, sans Popsicle sticks.

At this point, I was feeling pretty cool. I had learned a new cast-on, and had accomplished some complicated stick architecture with the slipped stitches. In my mind, the socks were practically done. Then Nadia asked me to "knit one, purl one" in the round for 18 rows.

"Ummm...." I said. "Knit one, purl one in the same row?" I could tell that Nadia was having difficulty even comprehending my lack of experience. I have only knit and purled in alternating rows. To alternate stitches, I'd actually have to know what a knit and purl looked like, and I'd have to "prepare the yarn" after each stitch so it would sit in the right place.

That last bit was where she lost me. She said something about wrapping towards the top and bottom, which I never understood. I spoke of wrapping right and left, which she never understood. Then we settled on "do everything counter-clockwise," and I had a moment when I thought I was getting it. But every time I showed it to Nadia, she said, "You're twisting your stitches."

Readers, I don't know what twisted stitches look like, so I didn't know how I was making them. Stitch after stitch, I knit when I should have purled, and purled when I should have knit. I wrapped top when it was bottom, and bottom when it was top. I kept jabbing the needle through the almost molecular loops and reminding myself that using all those needles is a bit like driving in the snow: just don't look directly at it. Suddenly, I glanced up, head spinning, eyes glazed. I got up from my chair and wandered over to the other side of the store, where I tried to relax by touching the beautiful soft skeins of yarn hanging everywhere. Didn't work. Each one seemed to be taunting me, "You can't make socks out of us! You can't make socks out of us!"

I hate to admit defeat, even if something is hard. I have a childhood history of quitting hobbies that I'm still trying to shake. But I wasn't having any fun, and my eyes were really killing me. Nadia broke it to me gently: "If I'd known you hadn't done much knitting, I would have suggested that socks were a bit ambitious." A nice lady next to me touched my arm and said, "I donated my sock yarn. Let me show you this shawl I made instead." Meanwhile, a girl across the table who appeared to be six years old was whipping out the fanciest socks I've ever seen. Maybe she's been knitting since birth, I told myself. After all, babies have to do a lot of sitting around.

And Readers, why do they call it "knitting in the round?" That sucker was a square if I ever saw one.