Knitting without a pattern?

I get the impression that most people in this group are knitting with patterns.

I have some basic patterns for socks, mittens, sweaters, etc. that I've adapted in various ways.

Or I just wing it a lot. Always seems to turn out fine.

Anybody else do that a lot, and what successes might you have to report?

I like to wing it often, too. I made a cute little doll for a little girl that started out based on a pattern, but was 98% winging it from there. It turned out very nicely, although I'll have to do a better job of the hair next time.

I have a standard pattern for socks (my own adaptation over several socks), and occasionally I'll use a pattern - especially if the item in question is complicated.

I do make many things without patterns, mostly because I need to change things to make them fit anyway (no one makes sweaters that look good on pear-shaped women!). Sometimes the result is somewhat mutant in appearance, but sometimes it turns out really well.

It's harder to do when the project is big - there's more time and space to screw up, and it's hard to abandon a project when you've spent so much time on it.

(I'm talking about just sitting down and figuring it out step by step as I knit, rather than figuring it all out beforehand.)

I tend to use standard pattern "recipes" when I'm knitting for myself. I know my own sizing well enough to be able to take a bit from here and there and design as I go. When I knit for others, though, I often stick more closely to a pattern, since I want the garment to fit and be usable.

I like The Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns for guidelines on all sorts of things, and Knitting in the Old Way for a good explanation of making sweaters from measurements without using patterns.

Anybody pause movies to get patterns? (I know you do ...)

Recently I watched "Il Postino" on DVD (two hankies if you haven't seen it), and there was a special feature on Neruda. It briefly showed a b/w photo of some school children, one of whom was wearing a sweater with great patterns.

I feel felted handbag coming on.

Lately, I knit most things from my own head and rarely from patterns and when I do have patterns I often change them.

I do often look for stitch patterns (sitting with Barbara Walker's books is like being in a candy store) then use a variety of stitches and sit and do the math with whatever yarn I'm using and figure it out.

I have been doing a variety of button over cowls in classic aran stitch patterns and brioche stitch -which is devine, and charted my own little laceweight pattern for a scarf.

I don't think I've ever knit a hat from a pattern I have always just picked up my circular needles and started.

The last hats I did I used a herringbone stitch which was very different when worked in fine merino than when I worked it in Rowan big wool with a strand of kidsilk haze to make it look sort of tweed-like.

I have a sweater I've been designing but planning a wedding and other things have been getting in the way.

Yes nohrt4me: I do stop film footage to look for pattern designs. It seems I want all my clothing to be from the 1930's and 1940's without the girdles or the depression or WWII.

I somtimes stare at sweaters on the el train as well (I'm in Chicago). I realized to my embarassment one day that a man thought I was checking him out and I almost said "I am just interested in your sweater."

>6 Marensr:

I have been watching this group, but had to join after I saw your comment. I have actually stopped people on the street and asked permission to snap a photo or make a quick sketch of an interesting cable or Fair Isle pattern! No one has ever turned me down, although I have had some VERY strange looks!

I have no imagination, and would be hard-pressed to create a pattern completely from scratch. But I have charted out basic patterns to fit me (like ranaverde, I am definitely pear-shaped), and I will often adapt an interesting feature from a published pattern to enhance my basic sweater patterns.

#7

I am glad you joined. I have actually sketched patterns I am interested in on the train if I can do so discreetly. (I am too afraid to ask but I may have to try next time).

Knitting on the train is another experience. My fiance says he loves watching other people watch me knit when we are riding the train together. Other times I have had people ask me what I am knitting or how I remember what to knit since I am often working without a pattern or with my own scrawled notes.

I think that modifying patterns to get the best personal fit is the next direction most knitters will be going (if they aren't already there) I imagine those knitters of my grandmothers generation knew their measurements and modified accordingly. I love having things fit properly.

Are you in Portland? I have visited some great knit shops in Portland, OR and still have great pendleton cone yarn from the factory outlet.

If you don't have them already check out Barbara Walker's books they are an encyclopedic collection of various stitch patterns, charted, cable, lace. It is a little easier than stopping strangers.

>8 Marensr:

Yes, I am in Portland, and we do have some wonderful yarn shops. I have quite a bit of business travel, and if I have any spare time, it is always a huge dilemma whether to check out bookstores, yarn shops, or quilt shops. Usually I settle for whatever is open in the evening.

I don't have any of Barbara Walker's books, but I will check them out. My knitting has suffered a bit since I started carrying a laptop computer on my business trips. Pre-laptop (about 20 years ago) it was easy to tell how much travel I had in any given year, by the number of knitting projects I completed. But I insist on traveling light, with carry-on bags only. My knitting output declined even more when I became obsessed with quilting, which took up some of my at-home time.

Not too long ago, I was in the Starbucks in the Pearl District with a friend, when I noticed two young ladies sitting across from us. They were college age, very attractive, and both were knitting at a furious pace while they had a very intense discussion of some topics from their latest Physics class. One was obviously an experienced knitter - working a shaped piece with some very complicated cables, without referring to notes or a pattern - while the other was more of a beginner and working on a scarf. I couldn’t hold back a huge smile. Nice to know I am not the only one who is technically inclined, and yet loves this ancient craft.

Portland is a great city. My sister - an extraordinary knitter- lives there and we are always trying to figure out how to split our time when I visit- between the knit shops, the hiking, the coast, the good food and Powell's bookstore. There is never really enough time.

I love that there are all these new knitters. I am just old enough that knitting was not particularly cool when my mom was teaching my sisters and me. I love seeing them knitting on the train or in coffee shops.

Is Closeknit the shop with the good selection of books or is it The Naked Sheep? One of them has a little book room off to the left as you enter and I think you might be able to peruse Walker there.

>10 Marensr:

I am also of that age where it was not particularly cool to be knitting in my college dorm. My aunt taught me when I was 5, but I really took off when I got to college. I caught a lot of grief from some feminists, because empowered women didn't have to do all that old-fashioned stuff any more. I always figured being empowered meant I could be an engineer AND a knitter if I damn well wanted to!

You might be thinking of the Yarn Garden, located on Hawthorne in SE Portland. They have a room to the left of the entry, with books, needles, etc.
http://www.yarngarden.net/

I went to their website to look for a link, and I see all their Noro yarn will be 20% off next week. That will put a dent in my book budget, or maybe my quilt fabric budget!

That's it! Yarn Garden. We went to so many knit shops in one day it is hard to keep them straight.

Engineering and knitting that seems like a good fit. That is interesting. I wonder what disciplines knitters come from. I suspect that we come from a broad range of backgrounds but I wonder if it influences how we think about knitting.

Or perhaps knitters are self-selecting -people who like to see a design emerge.

I'll send my sister the sale information.

per 11:

God, I'm over 50, and I thought younger feministas were more enlightened now. In the old days, we all signed up for mechanics courses so we could deal with basic car maintenance and not get hoodwinked by male mechanics.

I caught some flak from my fellow mechanics students for knitting, but I asked them how being able to knit your own socks was somehow less feminist than being able to fix your own car?

That shut them up.

In my view, being able to knit (and sew) nowadays allows you to opt out of buying garments made in sweat shops.

So knit, purl and pass the Mother Jones.

for me it is also a creative outlet. I look at knitting, crocheting and embroidering as art forms as much as practical abilities.

I agree with you mnohrt4me, I think "feminism" as it is institutionalized is far to narrow to encompass most feminists. Knit on.

Sorry, I'm Gautherbelle and have been kinitting since I was sixteen. I love making socks and afghans.

>13 nohrt4me: I am also over 50. Grew up in a small town and went to small schools. Girls were NOT allowed to take shop class. We had to take Home Ec, which absolutely infuriated me.

I had been sewing since I was 6 (learned on my Grandma's old treadle machine), and I had already made dresses and at least one lined jacket by the time I reached junior high. But they wouldn't allow me to challenge the class. Our sewing class consisted of making an apron. Just a flat piece really, sort of like a rod-pocket cafe curtain. Hemmed at sides and bottom, with a channel at the top so you could slide in this mini plastic hula hoop thingie for a waistband. I was livid at wasting my time on this nonsense!

It was OK about the shop class though. My Dad was a real do-it-yourselfer. He taught me how to read blueprints, tie knots, frame walls, hang drywall, pour concrete, tune up a car, and shoot a rifle (at targets - I refused to hunt).

13 & 15

I am 32 just old enough to not be among the twenty-something hipsters knitting in coffee shops now (that isn't an insult I am just not hip).

My sister's and I learned to knit from our Mom (just like we learned to sew and cook and bake and drive stickshift) She did those things because it was a way she could provide herself with clothing and good food.

Similarly we learned from my father to flyfish, geology and changing tires (oh and #15 also hang drywall). They all just seemed like different skill sets not necessarily gender specific (especially since my mom won national rifle shooting titles (also targets)).

The criticism I got was more out of wonder at an seemingly antiquated skill. "You know you can buy sweaters" that sort of thing.

If learning these skills as children was supposed to set my sisters and I back I can't fathom how I have one sister who is a NASA scientist and another who is an attorney.

I do think younger women are claiming knitting as both a means of artistic expression and for the value of having a real skill, and the ability creating something not mass produced.

I think societal ideals about what is considered gender-specific or sexist swing on a pendulum of excess and then settle into something more moderate. Maybe that is why so many younger women today can claim knitting without stigma or criticism.

I am glad however that women of my Mom's generation and yours knit through the criticism.

This thread has taken an odd turn, but I like it.

One of the reasons I like knitting is that I loved algebra in school, and in making up my own patterns, and resizing them for different people, I use a lot of math.

Not knitting with a pattern (to get back to the original topic), also hones problem-solving skills.

I also found that knitting helped clear the brain fog and ordered thought processes when I was of an age for those things to be a problem. (And for those who may find these a problem now, let me add that they are temporary conditions.)

I can hang drywall, but that's the extent of my carpentry skills. I'm better with machines.

#17

It is an interesting turn.

I have had times when I go to knit with a group of knitters and spend the whole time doing math. I think they sometimes wonder if I am really a knitter when that happens.

Sometimes it is for knitting without a pattern sometimes there is a pattern I want to knit but not in the suggested yarn so I do the math to make it work or I am adjusting it slightly to knit it on circular needles or some combination of the above.

There is something so satisfying about understanding how changing the needle-size or the number of stitches changes the garment. It really does give you a sense of clarity and control about how to make finished garment the way you want it.

One of my friends says she can't knit because there is two much counting.

I suppose my career at the moment is firmly in the broadly humanist vein but I always included math and science with them. I enjoy math and use it often in my day job.

I wonder if there are many math-adverse knitters out there?

>16 Marensr: I don't care how or why young knitters decide to try. Once you get to playing with all the wonderful textures and colors, I think most who try are hooked. And all that wild stuff - modular knitting, free-form knitting, even some of the mosaic patterns - should make it possible for even the most math-challenged to create something beautiful.

>18 Marensr: I hadn't thought about whether knitting would be less attractive to the math adverse. I am definitely not in that category.

I'm 45, grew up in Minneapolis, MN and took both home ec and shop in school. I didn't learn to cook or sew from my mother, and learned to knit from a former co-worker. My dad did teach me to change a tire and check the oil level ^_^.

My first year of junior high, we girls were still limited to home ec only. It opened up after that, and I was able to do both. Dropped cooking class right away, but loved my sewing teachers.

But it seemed to be a time of change all around the country. A woman a year younger than me who grew up in another part of the Twin Cities would have been allowed to take shop classes with written permission from her parents--which they refused to give. Another woman of similar age grew up in another state, and by the time she hit high school, her school had cut all the home ec and shop classes!

A friend has lamented to me over a trend she sees in modern America, that of people not producing real things out of their own households. That may be not cooking their own meals, or making their own clothes, growing/hunting their own food or maintaining their own houses or lands. I guess I'm just trying to buck that trend.

This thread is really amazing to me - I'm one of those "new knitters" (although I've been sewing and knitting for 15+ years, ever since I was a wee one), the 20-somethings that folks are marketing toward like crazy. :-) It's very affirming and interesting to read all of these stories of embattled knitters during the height of 2nd-wave feminism, and diy knitting as feminist practice. Hoorah.

My high school didn't offer home ec, and the shop program was on the way out...in fact, there was a real attitude that making anything remotely utilitarian would cast a stain on our upper-middle-class status, and should be left for less smart/ambitious/privileged kids. What a way to indoctrinate little consuming machines, eh? Luckily, my parents were creative types of a useful stripe. I learned how to sew from my mom (who owned a dressmaking business) and picked up knitting on my own initiative shortly thereafter. Now (to revert to the original topic), I often start with a pattern and go wild with the alterations. I agree that it's so satisfying to understand the effects of manipulating the different elements to create a well-fitted garment. I'm also getting into designing my own stuff, but I'm more of a "write the pattern beforehand" type of designer, rather than a "figure it out on the needles" one.

PS - Three cheers for all the Portland love!

Not to hog my own thread, but I read that a Montessori school was teaching kids to knit "socks" for their recorders (those flute things). Girls and boys had to learn.

As more mothers work, I hope these self-sufficiency skills aren't getting lost!

An interesting historical note. My dad is over 80. When he was a 12, he had a knee operation that laid him up most of the summer with physical therapy. He wasn't much of a reader, so the nurses taught him to knit.

He has since developed a rare and severe form of adult asthma, and doesn't get around very well. I have tried to get him interested in knitting again, but he's afraid some of his buddies will catch him at it.

On the other hand, a cousin's father took up knitting in his 60s after his first heart attack. He made each of the grandkids the most beautiful baby blankets I ever saw before he died, but made everyone swear to say it was his wife who did them.

How sad! But what great heirlooms the kids got! (They know the real story now ...)

nohrt4me - the conversation hasn't gone exactly where it started but it has been a great thread.

#19 and 21 I agree -I don't care how knitters get their start and I wasn't denigrating the crop of new knitters at all. I am glad there is a knitting renaissance and #21 I'd hardly consider you a new knitter.

I had a young stage manager friend in Chicago who went into a knitting shop to start learning to knit and they were so rude to her (I think because she has funky spikey hair that is sometimes purple as much as because she is young) so she came to my apartment with a few friends to learn and she is a fabulous knitter now -one who was almost turned off by someone who judged her- she doesn't use that knit shop though.

#20 I agree with your friend's lament about people not producing their own meals and own clothes.

I think that is what I find most gratifying knitting is seeing the product of my labor (I suppose that is sort of Marxist -in the philosophy rather than political sense- being divorced from the product of one's labor causing alienation- my rough paraphrase.)

Actually after grad school the only things I wanted to do were knit and make soup and decoupage things. I needed to see the end result of my work in a concrete form.

I noticed a group of 4-5 male knitters in a Chicago coffee shop so maybe that unfortunate stereotype is changing too. I was walking by outside and almost went in to tell them how pleased and proud I was of them all.

#20 & #23: From grad school on, I have noticed that 'my kind' (academics in the Humanities) seem to reach out for skills like knitting, baking, sewing, woodcrafts, in order to somehow fill the need to actually produce something tangible. I know that I feel that way about my knitting (and baking and sewing); even though very much enjoy teaching, I still need that sense that I can produce something tactile and useful...

>22 nohrt4me: Years ago, I had a friend who worked for the state DOT, weighing big trucks along the freeway. Sometimes very busy, sometimes long stretches of boredom. His wife taught him to knit, and he was very good at it. At the permanent weigh station, he installed a small shelf below the window, so he could quickly hide the knitting when a trucker showed up.

From grad school on, I have noticed that 'my kind' (academics in the Humanities) seem to reach out for skills like knitting, baking, sewing, woodcrafts, in order to somehow fill the need to actually produce something tangible.

Yuppers. My knitting took off during the last years of grad school and the first years of teaching.

Now I'm out of academia, but the crafts stuck; I enjoyed doing things with my hands when I was a kid, and I still do.

One nice side effect of having parents of similar bent, and having pursued crafts like spinning, dyeing, weaving, knitting, etc. etc. on my own is that I feel like, if the current infrastructure crashed, I'd be able to function. Hell, I'd be able to build a log cabin and furnish it, using materials I raised!

I do worry about all the other people who haven't learned such things; there was no shop or home ec classes when I was in school (I'm 37) and I know I was lucky to have parents as handy as they are.

re: 25

There's a funny story in The Shipping News, which takes place in Newfoundland where men apparently knit. One of the characters tells a joke about a trucker who was knitting while driving.

The cop pulled up and said, "Pull over!"

The trucker looked over and said, "No, cardigan!"

23 > If the group you saw was meeting at the Argo Tea next to the Oriental Theater, that's my group. Nice to know we were noticed :-)

You know the group I was thinking of initially was on Southport - it looked like some were learning but now that you mention it I did see a group in Argo Tea by the Oriental.

I was indulging in buying books at the mega-Borders next door (as is my wont after a bad day at the day job) and stopped in to buy tea (my next addiction) and saw what must have been your group. I had forgotten.

Yes, as often as I am noticing peoples sweaters I also notice other knitters on trains, in coffee shops. I feel this kinship - such that, if I had my knitting with me, I should be able to sit down and start knitting a pick up an old conversation without disrupting anyone.

Hurrah for your group!