Going in Circles

The knit and crochet group I belong to has been learning how to knit in the round using two circular needles or circs as the hip woman in the You Tube video called them. Doing anything in the round is much easier in crochet and some of my characters in the crochet mysteries would probably think I was a traitor, but I was curious how it worked with knitting and it was something I could use in the proposal that seems to be taking forever to finish.

For anyone who doesn’t know circular needles are really short versions of knitting needles joined by a cable. One set is already unruly with the plastic cable part snaking around. But working with two at the same time?

When I first tried, I hyperventilated when I looked all the stitches and needles going every which way. I couldn’t imagine that it would ever be easy. Somehow it reminded me of being an O operator. It was a long time ago back before everything was computerized and the closest thing to a cell phone was a mobile phone and there were few of them. Actually the big change was answer machines.

I wore a headset that pinched my ears and I sat hooked into a switchboard. I plugged in cords to make person to person calls. I was the one who said you’re three minutes are up. I also was the one who asked for more money. I could tell how much was deposited by the sound. It was also before the 911 system, so we Os were who you called in an emergency and we summoned help. If someone yelled “help” and dropped the phone, I had to put a trace on the call and get the phone number and address and stay on the line until help arrived. Oh, and I had to fill out some kind of card for each call.

The point to all this is that when I first got the job and was going to be trained, I took one look at the operators and all those cords and clips on the coin phone cords and thought I’d never learn how to do it. Of course I did learn how to do it, and it became second nature. Then I wondered how it had ever seemed impossible.

That’s the cool thing about learning something. It forever changes your world – maybe not in a big way, but it changes it.

So even with dealing with snaking cables and brain freeze when I tried to figure out which stitches I was supposed to work with which needles, I wanted to keep going. Thanks to Linda in my group who sent me the link to the You Tube demonstration, I began to understand what I was actually doing. But I needed to be able to think it through in my head before my fingers got another shot at it.

I let it percolate in my mind and then like a curtain opening and light coming in, the pieces fell into place and I “got it.”

I wouldn’t say I’m flying through knitting in the round yet – I’m closer to making a bracelet than a sock – but it has forever changed my world. When I look at a pattern for making sock using two circular needles, I will now understand. Even be able to picture how to do it in my head.

Learning something new is so cool. First there’s the challenge, wondering if you’ll be able to do it. Then you start and probably struggle. Somewhere there is most likely a black moment when it seems like you’ll never get it. Then the big aha moment and nothing is ever quite the same.

What seemingly impossible thing have you learned to do ?