Greatly Surprised

At my age it can be hard to be surprised as it seems the phrase: been there, done that, often comes to mind. But today I have managed to surprise myself.

On the quest to make ornaments I decided to give Amalia Samios´, Christmas Gift ornament a try. It is so simple, knit six squares, line each with some cardboard and sew them together. However, if it is going to work out properly all six sides of the square have to be exactly the same size. This is where the surprise came in.

I have been knitting for years and goodness knows how many thousands of hours have been devoted to it. One would think after all that time a certain consistency of stitch size and gauge would have been developed, but if you know me, really know me, you know precision is not one of my strengths. So I took on this present ornament as a test to see if all this knitting has done anything to improve my consistency.

Each of the six sides was knit separately over a couple of days. It is true for me that my stitch size can be impacted by the degree of stress or lack of stress or fatigue, arthritis pain during the day. No particular effort was made to insure all the squares would be the same, I just happily knit away as I watched the Netflix show Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat (it covers the four elements of cooking.) The only trick I did and this is done for everything I make, the bind off has to be done on a needle two sizes larger than the one used to create. Apparently my bind off is very tight and this is the only remedy I have found to make it match the rest of my knitting.

And voila I was greatly surprised the six pieces are exactly the same. I am amazed that handwork, done by me, can be so uniform. And trust me I am not bragging here, most knitters get this precision without decades of knitting, I am simply blown away that I could do it. Want to see the evidence?

One side of the stack of six

Laid out in a line, see I am not precise, the line has a curve, but the squares remain the same size

A closeup of the stack with the shadow of the camera

So for today I am greatly surprised this worked. Next step will be precision in sewing them together, another task that will test another skill.

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