Learning to Knit
One and half years is a long time to be working towards something. When someone tells you, “finally after one and a half years, I…” you might expect the sentence to end with something along the lines of “ran the NYC marathon” or “finished my novel”. You probably don’t expect an “I knit a tank top” confession, but that’s what this is!
To be fair, it’s not like I was knitting continuously for 18 months straight. Far from it. There were long breaks during work deadlines and nine months of pregnancy. And it’s not just any tank top. It’s the Camisole No.5 by My Favourite Things Knitwear, which I later learned is ranked a 4 out of 5 in terms of difficulty. Anyways, I liked the design so much that it single-handedly convinced me—someone who had never knit so much as a scarf—to start knitting.
Unlike sewing projects, which generally are confined to a dedicated space and take less time, I’m surprised by how much knitting projects feel like companions. They come with you on holidays, into doctor office waiting rooms, and into bed when you’re sick or tired. Every part of this camisole has a memory attached to it. The left strap was knit on our honeymoon, up in a mountain hut. There was no wifi and limited service, which was lovely aside from me still craving Knitting 101 YouTube videos for reassurance. A good portion of the neckline was knit on my way to and from meeting one of my best friends in Paris. The return train was more than two hours late due to hitting a wolf and I may have been the only non-grumpy passenger because that equated to about 10 extra rows. The endless body in 2x2 ribbing was done entirely doing contact naps with my now six month old daughter.
If you asked me a year ago if I enjoy knitting, I would have probably said no. The romantic image I had of knitting might stem from “Goodnight Moon”, which I’m now re-reading some 30 years later. The mother rabbit’s presence is attentive but not overly so: she sits nearby the child in a rocking chair, knitting in dim lighting. I’m far from finding knitting meditative. I still need to chant “knit, knit, purl, purl” in my head while I do the ribbing, so we have an unspoken house rule that knitting and talking don’t mix. But I hope that will change with practice. If you asked me today if I enjoy knitting, I think I would say yes.
Below are some videos that I found helpful, if not necessary, should you make your own Cami! I’m going to skip basic videos like “how to knit”, “how to purl”, “how to cast on”, etc. because I assume you’re less green than I am (but if you’re a total beginner, you got this!)
LINKS
I found troubleshooting mistakes super complicated in ribbing, so lifelines are there to help you easily frog back to a row and start over. I added one about every 15 rows at the beginning which felt like a security blanket. https://youtu.be/crn5FRx5_74
The double knitted edges were tricky for me to work out from the instructions alone. This video helped, albeit not in English: https://youtu.be/MpMOz47w9vk
She has a separate video (this one with English CCs) demonstrating grafting the edge at the end: https://youtu.be/MpMOz47w9vk
Tubular bind-off is important for the neckline so it remains stretchy: https://youtu.be/0jPMLIE7ac8
I also used the tubular bind-off for the body at the waist, which required converting 2x2 ribbing to 1x1 ribbing for one row: https://youtu.be/YCY_2oxi_vA
Weaving in ends! https://youtu.be/ohtv2fyd_lY
P.S. The construction of the camisole has the armhole and neck hole edges as the last steps. I put the body on hold once the front and back were connected and instead, got those tricky edges out of the way, and saved the meditative 2x2 body for last. I recommend this! It also meant I wasn’t worried about running out of yarn, because if I did, it would have just meant a slightly shorter crop. Speaking of which, I made the body 6cm longer than the pattern recommended since I didn’t want a crop at all, and plan to wear it tucked in.
P.P.S. I knit a size Small, and used almost exactly three balls of “dark moose” merino yarn from Knitting for Olive.
