I didn’t say it

I am not going to suggest, gentle readers, that knitters are a specific sort of person, or that we all possess the same personality traits. I’ve met knitters from all over, and there’s not a single thing that I can point to and say “There. That’s how you can tell. He’s tidy. That’s a knitter thing.” * I’ve met knitters who have their household supplies organized alphabetically, and ones who live in homes that are all in a tip. Those two things aren’t even related. I’ve met knitters who’s knitting is a total mess, but you’d feel comfortable licking any surface in their supernaturally clean apartment, and knitters who knit with a precision and attention to detail that would make you weep, assuming you can find a tissue somewhere in the disorganized mountain of stuff they keep around them. There is simply no predicting it, and I’ve given up trying.

You can’t say all knitters are young, or all knitters are old, you can predict their gender statistically, but men make up too much of the field to be able to say for certain. I can’t take a guess at your politics, and I can’t say that you like wool, and if you’d like to start the knitter equivalent of a bar-fight, just get yourself twenty knitters in a room together and say something like “Straight needles are simply the best.”  We are a random crew, and the only thing I can tell someone for sure, is that you have no idea what a knitter is like, or what they like – except for knitting.

That said, I feel confident that there is not one among you can argue with the idea that knitters can be a little… detail oriented. That it can be easy for us to lose ourselves in getting the minutia of something tiny right, to spend forever nailing down something so that it is knitterly and perfect.  Take the braids on this mitten, for example.  I have taken the time to reverse them, so that the braids on the left mitten point left, and the braids on the right mitten point to the right, because knitters, that’s just darned elegant. Will anyone every notice? Will a single person outside of this blog ever think to themselves that they’re just that little bit more perfect? Maybe not. Maybe just me… and you.  That kind of attention to detail isn’t something that everyone notices.  You might not have done it yourself, you might not have chosen to spend your time that way. You might look at it and think “wing of moth Stephanie how can that have been your goal” but not a one of you is going to say “that is stupid, doesn’t make a spot of difference, and is not at all the difference between knitting that is a 9, and knitting that’s the full damn Monty.”

perfectbraids 2016-08-09

It is freakin’ beautiful, and perfect, and perhaps the reason that I missed the big picture. Those braids are the very essence of perfection, and balance, and … well, not nearly enough to make it so you don’t notice that I’ve accidentally reversed the colours on the entire mitten hand on the second one – but I didn’t notice until I went to take a very smug picture to show you.

dammit 2016-08-09

How’s that for attention to detail?

PS. Someone’s going to ask for the pattern, so here it is.

chart 2016-08-09

That’s the chart # from Latvian Mitttens, the number of stitches I cast on, the row I put the thumb on, how many stitches the thumb is, the row on which I started the decreases for the top, and the type of decrease I used.  Boom. It’s all I need. (Except apparently to pay attention. Speed Kills, kids.)

*I will admit that the number of knitters who have a fondness for bags of all kinds seems to be somewhat telling, and we do seem to be rather preternaturally attracted to office supplies, but it may be a causal relationship. We probably start out normal.