3KCBWDAY6 - Improving Your Skillset

 Day 6 - Improving Your Skillset

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 have to admit that I don't go looking for patterns with a view to learning something new.  I look for patterns on a 'that looks nice; I'll add that to my Favourites' basis.  Having said that, if there's something new to be learned with a pattern, I'll give it a go.

Short row, knitted down from the shoulder set-in sleeves was something I learned firstly on my Redhook capped sleeve tunic and then improved when I made Deco (the Carol Sunday short-row method seemed to work really well for me).  With Tinder, I learned how to make one-row buttonholes, which I hadn't done before. 

There are certainly things I've never done, some of which I might learn if I ever choose to make something that uses that technique. 

I've never tried double knitting, but don't have a yearning to learn.  I won't discount doing it in the future though.

Amigurumi is something else I haven't done, but I have plans in that direction - particularly Melvin the Snail!







In the last two years, I've learned to spin (since my husband bought me an Ashford Traveller for Christmas 2009) so I'm working on improving that, although I am managing to make yarn that's less 'arty' these days

So, whilst I'm comfortable with what I already know, I'm open to new ideas or techniques.

In any case, if I start to think that I'm getting 'stale' and feel the need for something new, there's always weaving!