Growing Pains

Yesterday, when I picked up my knitting, my husband said, "Oh - are you going to be working on your swearing again?"

What? You mean I swear at the project every time I pick it up? Evidently so. And, really, it's not that hard; I just make mistakes.

@#!%^&^&^$#$$#()(**)&_^*!!!!!!!1!!

I make mistakes because I'm learning. I have a fair amount of theoretical knowledge about knitting, but little practical experience - my life before retirement was such that I had virtually no time to gain that experience. So I'm making up for it now by pushing myself a little. I have in mind a series of projects for the future to specifically develop that experience.

And apparently, um, I'm "improving" my vocabulary in the process. Maybe I need to learn more swear words in other languages as part of my self-education. I know a few in German, French and Spanish. Perhaps it's time to branch out beyond the Indo-European languages. Oh wait - Joe taught me a few in Korean too.

And the experience factor goes beyond knitting too, of course. The other day while recovering from the stomach bug we seem to be sharing around here, I felt enough better that I was a bit bored, so I decided to warp the rigid heddle loom I bought in April and haven't yet used. Fortunately RH looms are pretty simple, so the warping process only takes about an hour, because the next day I realized that I had warped it backwards. Completely unuseable. So I had to partially disassemble the loom and reverse what I had done. At least that was possible and I didn't have to just undo an hour's worth of work.

It looks innocent enough, doesn't it?

Somewhat in my defense, it's hard to tell one end of this loom from the other, unlike any shaft loom I've ever used. I've now employed some blue tape and a Sharpie to fix that little issue. And when I posted what I'd done and how dumb I felt on the rigid heddle loom Facebook group, I was a bit comforted by just how many people had done the exact same thing. (I particularly enjoyed the comment from a man, an experienced weaver, who said he did it in front of a group while doing a demo, and then turned it into a demo of how to fix it. "Um, I meant to do that. Yes. Yes, I did.")

If you care to follow along, I'm documenting my various projects under my profile on Ravelry, here. (You may need to sign up for Ravelry to view that, if you don't belong.)

Though I haven't yet found the section there where one can document the expansion of one's vocabulary.