How far down the road to learning your craft do you believe yourself to be? Are you comfortable with what you know or are you always striving to learn new skills and add to your knowledge base? Take a look at a few knitting or crochet books and have a look at some of the skills mentioned in the patterns. Can you start your amigurumi pieces with a magic circle, have you ever tried double knitting, how's your intarsia? If you are feeling brave, make a list of some of the skills which you have not yet tried but would like to have a go at, and perhaps even set yourself a deadline of when you'd like to have tried them by.
i learned to knit 6 years ago, and i consider myself at least intermediate to advanced as far as my skills go. over the years i've taken different classes to learn a new knitting technique, from magic loop toe up socks to double knitting. one of the reasons i love going to knitters day out is so i can learn a new knitting technique. just when i think i've learned everything, i find a new skill to learn! the KDO catalog will be coming out in a couple of months, and i can't wait to see what's in store for this year!
this year i learned several skills while making my diantha shawl - nupps, beads, making a crescent shawl. i learned another one recently with diantha - soaking and reblocking! she got quite a beating on vacation, and she deserved it (plus i could block it better than i did the first time!)
while i've done some intarsia in the past (my sock monkey hats; a pair of mittens), my current shawl project - earth & sky - is largely intarsia, so learning to switch yarns without making holes in the fabric has been an interesting challenge.
one skill i haven't really attempted is fair isle color work. i admire fair isle hats, mittens (i must have a dozen spillyjane mittens on my favorites list on ravelry!) and sweaters but i've never taken the time to learn. perhaps this is the year that i'll break down and knit a pair of fiddlehead mittens!
i'm also a huge fan of cat bordhi. i use her cast on to make moebius scarves but i've yet to make a pair of her socks despite owning three of her sock books. what prevents me from making a pair? figuring out the math and measuring my foot to calculate the number of cast on stitches! sheer laziness, i know. maybe someday - i'll sit down with pencil and paper and figure this out, so i can make a pair of custom socks.
i remember my old knitting teacher telling me that after knitting for over 40 years, she felt that she didn't need to learn more new techniques. i think that's sad. i'm hoping that when i've been knitting for 40 years, i'm still learning something new!
