New Year's Resolution revisited

You may remember that one of my New Year's knitting resolutions was to learn Entrelac knitting. I originally thought I'd make a scarf as my practice piece, but the truth is, I have a lot of scarves. So I decided instead to make a case for my Alpha-Smart keyboard.

Teaching myself entrelac was a real challenge. First, I looked online for directions and patterns. I found plenty of them. I had a skein of Red Heart variagated yarn I bought at a church rummage sale for 25 cents. I sat down with the first set of directions and began.

And was hopelessly lost by the second step. Ripped it out and started over. Again, everything was soon a tangle.

I decided I needed different directions. Started over. Another mess.

And so it went. But I'm stubborn enough I refused to give up. After much trial and error I figured it out

So here are the lessons I learned in my adventure in Entrelac:

1. Learning a new skill with cheap yarn is less intimidating. I had no qualms about ripping out and starting over multiple times. (And the yarn I used is really quite lovely.)

2. If one set of directions doesn't work for you, try another. I had success with the third set of directions I printed out. Different people have different ways of explaining things and this is the one that clicked with me.

3. Remember to breathe! I tense up when learning a new skill and have to remind myself to relax and have fun with it.

Right now, I'm taking a class to learn to knit two socks on two circulars at my LYS (Yes -- we finally HAVE a LYS here in the hinterlands, a very nice one.) Another challenging technique, but I think I'm finally getting the hang of it.

So -- what new skills have you tackled lately?

Knitting Resolutions

I'm looking forward to 2008 as a year filled with knitting and writing, two of my favorite things. Though I'm not much on resolutions in general (many years I don't bother to make them at all) I do have a few knitting-related goals for the coming year. To whit:

1. This year, I'm going to learn entrelac. I have some nice variegated yarn and a scarf pattern I'm going to use as my first project.

2. I also want to try my hand at Fair Isle knitting -- Barbara's snowflake socks inspired me!

3. I'm going to complete some of the many projects I have yarn for -- sweaters and socks I'm eager to wear.

4. I'm going to do some summer knitting -- a sleeveless shell perhaps.

5. I'm going to knit some striped socks in order to use up the bits of sock yarn I've been collecting. The wilder the better for these.

So there you have my knitting resolutions. Would any of you like to share your own New Year's resolutions -- knitting or otherwise?