knitting swatchbook

Cable Stitch Swatch

Cable Stitch: Being Money Poor and Time Poor

Erica, Free

One reason I started this project is because I’m a little short on funds right now. Like most of the world, my salary has not kept pace with increased prices and I don’t have as much money for fun stuff. That includes both activities outside of home and spending money on my hobbies. This swatchbook is nice because I had already bought the yarn and I’m using instructions I can find for free on the internet. (I did buy a small kit of knitting supplies because I didn’t have a cable needle)

The trouble is, I’m time poor in addition to being money poor. I do so many things myself since I can’t afford to buy stuff or outsource the parts of my life I don’t want to do. Meal prepping takes time. Shopping around for the best deal on things I actually need takes time. And of course, maintaining the possessions I already have so I don’t need to buy new ones takes time. 

Then, I have my actual hobbies. In some cases, I purposely chose time-intensive hobbies so that I don’t accumulate as much stuff. My first foray into knitting resulted in more scarves than I knew what to do with, but no desire to learn a more advanced technique. Now, I’m committed to learning new things so that I can actually make things I want to wear, and possibly things I wouldn’t be able to afford on my own. But I don’t have the time anymore. I wish I’d been a little more disciplined and determined when I was younger and had less to worry about. But we can’t go back in time. Only forward. 

Anyway, cable stitch. I can do it now. I tried with the cotton yarn and that was a bit of a bust, but luckily I had some spare acrylic yarn from a past project and that worked out great! I’ve always wanted to knit a cable sweater and knit interesting designs into the cables. Now I’m one teeny tiny step closer! 

-Erica

Brioche Stitch

Brioche Stitch: New Things Are Exhausting

Erica, Free

It’s been a while since I’ve posted. That’s because I’ve been so exhausted that when I get home, all I have the energy to do is sit on the couch and watch TV until I fall asleep. I want to be knitting, but it’s hard to learn something new at the end of the day. 

Honestly, it’s always been hard for me to learn new things. I’m not sure why. A lot of things come naturally to me and so I’m not used to it when things don’t. And when I say a lot of things come naturally, I mean at a surface level. I’m definitely a jack of all trades, master of none type of person. All that to say, the brioche stitch was a bit of a challenge. 

The brioche stitch was a good place to start. It was something I’d never tried before, but always wanted to. And the instructions were nice and repetitive. Once I got the feel for it, it was smooth sailing. I really like how it turned out, and I’m excited to make some patterns that include this stitch in the figure.

The swatch has some mistakes, but I decided not to go back and redo it. I like the reminder that I was learning and wasn’t perfect. Plus, now I know what to look for in the future and can understand what happened and how to fix it. It’s a nice, low-stakes way to get used to imperfection.

-Erica

Ribbed Stitch: When You Can’t Follow Instructions 

Erica, Free

This is just a simple combination of stitches I already know. Why did I choose to knit a 2×2 ribbing in a cotton yarn that has very little flexibility? Because I wanted to start a new swatch but I didn’t want to follow instructions. The first two swatches were more like a warm up, a very basic reintroduction to knitting, which was nice. I feel ready to move on to something more advanced, something that keeps my hands busy while I watch TV, but I don’t have enough energy to read instructions. 

Work has been such a drain on me lately. I had to deal with a particularly ornery customer today. They wanted an update on their order status, which I can understand, but we just didn’t have the items in stock. We should have had the items in stock and we should have notified the customer that the items were delayed. I also should have known the items were delayed as the person designated to answer customer calls. But no one tells me anything AND I’m not allowed to pass calls on to anyone who is actually responsible. 

It’s worth clarifying, by the time someone calls, there’s nothing anyone can actually do unless we somehow have their items in the building to be screenprinted or embroidered. I can check to see if we have the items in the building, but chances are we have the base item for a different order. If we do have the items, I can find out where they are in the queue but I can’t change the queue. And I can’t do anything about who ordered them and why they were ordered so late because I don’t do the ordering, and I’m not allowed to forward calls to the person who does. I tried to put together a report showing the correlation between the orders we are getting complaints on and the time it took us to order for our supplier, but my boss does not care at all. 

That’s why I come home from work and, instead of working on a new stitch, I am knitting a small sample swatch out of yarn that has no elasticity. It’s not really what I want to be doing, but it is what it is.

-Erica