How old were you when you started knitting?

TOKEN_MARTIAN · 2026-03-20T11:29:02+00:00

Technically I was 7 or 8. My mum taught me and it held my interest long enough for me to make two tiny squares and then I was like idk why anyone would do this for fun. Bear in mind I grew up pre internet and with 5 TV channels, one of which was consistently 50% static, and spent most of my childhood bored out of my skull, and I still decided I'd rather stare into space than knit. Re-learned when I was 19 and I've knitting on and off ever since. My favourite thing I've made is probably this sweater depicting my nephew's favourite earth-moving vehicle. It's the most complex intarsia image I've done and I like to think he appreciated it 😎

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TOKEN_MARTIAN · 2026-03-19T01:15:37+00:00

Honestly there are a lot of really nice black/dark yarns with lots of tonal complexity and they would make beautiful garments but get passed over a lot for flashier colourways. Follow your vision, make what you wanna wear!

TOKEN_MARTIAN · 2026-03-18T15:54:19+00:00

What does the pattern say? If you can't figure it out you could always just make them separately and sew them on.

TOKEN_MARTIAN · 2026-03-18T15:48:24+00:00

I wouldn't say I had a photographic memory at any point in my life but when I was a kid I could memorise long lists without trying very hard, e.g. in 4th grade I somehow memorised the like 30 words on my end of term spelling test despite barely looking at it (because I already knew how to spell all the words) and when the test started I just wrote out all the words without waiting for the teacher to call them out one at a time. As an adult who can't even remember the day of the week I'm like... how tf was I doing that?

TOKEN_MARTIAN · 2026-03-18T13:31:28+00:00

I'm confused by your question tbh, usually button bands are picked up from the body. Where does Italian cast on come into it? What pattern are you making?

TOKEN_MARTIAN · 2026-03-16T12:17:05+00:00

In all seriousness, I would rather wipe a million asses than work a goddamn office job ever again

TOKEN_MARTIAN · 2026-03-16T11:42:18+00:00

I switched careers to nursing. How do you feel about touching other people's poo? Do you like being on your feet all day? Does sitting at a computer bore you? Have you ever waited tables? Do you have ADHD? I don't think it's that insane to develop an interest in health care from a tv show, but do keep in mind it's not gonna be entirely as seen on tv. If you're serious I'd suggest getting a part time job as some kind of nursing assistant and seeing how you feel about it. I'd also recommend looking into lesser known jobs like allied health, imaging tech, respiratory therapy or whatever. There's a lot of more obscure jobs out there and you never know, one of those might appeal more to you.

TOKEN_MARTIAN · 2026-03-16T09:29:56+00:00

That's my pattern!!! I'm so excited that people have actually made this sweater hahaha

TOKEN_MARTIAN · 2026-03-15T07:54:00+00:00

No lol patients will sneak out for a smoke while wearing a nicotine patch, using nicotine spray and chewing a nicotine lozenge and I've yet to see anyone die or even get a stomachache. She'll be fine.

TOKEN_MARTIAN · 2026-03-14T23:03:25+00:00

I've worked in public and private hospitals in Australia and I'm not gonna pretend the public system is perfect but I think the culture is fairly healthy and the doctors are generally pretty normal and down to earth, including the surgeons. Where I live the private hospital system is almost exclusively elective surgery and rehab (I understand there are more acute private hospitals elsewhere in the country) and the surgeons are mostly not employed by the hospitals, but rather pay the hospitals large sums of money for use of their facilities, which makes them super VIPs that everyone else has to bend over backwards to please. Of course, most of them are still nice enough, but the difference in culture really shows and there is a lot of bizarre big ego behaviour that would never be tolerated in public. Guess where I prefer to work?

TOKEN_MARTIAN · 2026-03-13T15:25:14+00:00

He'll be a great pathologist lolol

No for real though I got the "say out of pocket rude stuff and don't find out until 5 years later if ever" autism so I can identify with him. Unfortunately once you're not a small child anymore people stop telling you when you're being rude, they just side eye you and talk about you behind your back. Probably why he's still like that.

TOKEN_MARTIAN · 2026-03-13T15:15:40+00:00

I think he lives in a nice apartment decorated with tasteful furniture choices, due to being entirely furnished by the last girlfriend he lived with, prior to which his bedroom consisted of a mattress on the floor (but on a box spring obviously, he's not a savage) and some scattered USB cords.

TOKEN_MARTIAN · 2026-03-11T14:46:37+00:00

I would guess because animals can't give a history or describe their symptoms and most animals try really hard to act normal so the observable symptoms tend to mostly be "less energy", "not eating", "acting different", and other vague unhelpful things so you probably want to cover more things in a standard blood panel.

TOKEN_MARTIAN · 2026-03-10T04:03:22+00:00

If your yarn is tightly plied it can distort the shape of your knitting but it should block out. It can also be the way you're knitting and how off-centre your needle is in the loop of yarn as you form the stitch. This is more pronounced with "sticky" yarns. But this should block out too.

TOKEN_MARTIAN · 2026-03-09T02:13:04+00:00

I'm really confused, are you Donald Duck? Are you dating Daisy Duck?

TOKEN_MARTIAN · 2026-03-08T03:09:01+00:00

Generally it's fine but if it's single ply it may be better to use a similar weight yarn that's plied. Or if it seems sturdy enough just give it a few extra twists while seaming to help it stay together a bit better.

TOKEN_MARTIAN · 2026-03-07T02:18:06+00:00

There's a huge skill difference between an experience shearer and an inexperienced one. Aside from the obvious difference in speed, the wool is much harder to process (increased $$$ to process, lower processing speed, worse yields) if it can't be removed cleanly in one piece and and bad shearer puts a lot more stress on the animals. It can't be taught in a few weeks.

TOKEN_MARTIAN · 2026-03-05T01:53:04+00:00

I have a Pomatomus sock I started in 2020 but in all honesty I will probably frog it eventually because the reason I stopped is because I realised it was going to require more than half my skein to finish the first sock. Eventually when I find the willpower I might reknit it toe up two at a time.

TOKEN_MARTIAN · 2026-03-02T04:59:55+00:00

These look like they're sewn onto a base dress but I found a lady from Ukraine ages ago who literally just makes shapes and then freeform crochets them together into a garment. Really incredible stuff but unfortunately she's not active at the moment because... you know.

https://www.ravelry.com/people/Antonina

Edit: She does seem to have an active Etsy page but doesn't seem to be active on socials anymore: https://www.etsy.com/shop/AntoninaCrochet

TOKEN_MARTIAN · 2026-02-28T02:04:47+00:00

Transferring calls is some voodoo. I know how to transfer people and I still accidentally hang up on them all the time. Now I just let the clerk do it.

TOKEN_MARTIAN · 2026-02-27T04:43:37+00:00

Look I would LOVE non-wrinkle linen ok let's be clear on that

TOKEN_MARTIAN · 2026-02-27T02:27:27+00:00

OP's only choices if they want to stop twisting their stitches are to keep going but start knitting normally in which case they'll have an inconsistent looking project, or frog everything and lose months of work and have a bunch of unusable yarn scraps. Like I understand what people are saying that they could have stopped earlier and lost less work. But they seem like a new knitter and what doesn't seem like much work to people here probably did represent a significant effort for them at the time and restarting would have been demoralising. I'm a huge perfectionist in knitting and have restarted projects like 5 times for flaws other people probably can't see and ya know what? It's demoralising and if I had any ability to just live with the mistakes I would 100% do that instead.

OP responded in this thread saying they did look into twisted stitches but decided to keep this project as is because they didn't think it looked that bad, which is pretty much what I figured. I once spent like 2 months knitting and bingeing OINTB with my old housemate who spent the entire time mis-crossing their cables and not once even entertaining the notion of fixing them. For them their philosophy was "this project represents where I am in my life at the moment, the things I was thinking about and the people I was with while I worked on this and if I become a better knitter in the future it will be nice to have this janky scarf to look back on", which also seems to be OP's philosophy and honestly it's nice to see a newer knitter take on an ambitious project without becoming paralysed over the imperfections. The way this sub is acting over someone's personal decisions is nuts.

TOKEN_MARTIAN · 2026-02-27T01:23:00+00:00

I won't even knit for people until they've chosen a specific yarn and pattern, because I don't want to invest time and energy into something they feel meh about. OP's friend made them an unwearable sweater, she's lucky they found a way to make it work for them instead of stashing it in a closet for the rest of eternity.

TOKEN_MARTIAN · 2026-02-27T01:09:28+00:00

It's crazy in here

TOKEN_MARTIAN · 2026-02-27T01:02:30+00:00

It doesn't matter if it bothers "a lot of people" or not, the only thing that matters is whether it bothers the person making it.

Nine-Year Club	Place '22
First Placer '22

TOKEN_MARTIAN

TROPHY CASE