How many times do you get asked that question about your knitting? I never have any idea how long a particular project takes me, especially because I knit while I am doing important things, such as trying to stay awake in a meeting, or watching the latest Netflix delivery. Then, the other day I was looking at my cell phone for a calculator and discovered this feature:
I timed how long it took me to knit a pattern repeat on these socks –somewhere between 5 and 6 minutes. Using that information, plus including the length of a meeting where I turned the heel, (minus time for donut eating and coffee drinking) I estimate it took me about 5.5 hours to knit one sock in this stitch pattern.
Last week in my beginner knitting class, several people asked me the how- long -does- that- take -you question about the mate for that sock, and I finally had a answer. I know that one of my students is a born knitter, because she just nodded and said, “Cool, that’s just a few movies.”
The non-knitter response was equally entertaining.
A few days later I was sitting in my cube with one of the IT dudes who was installing some software, and while we were waiting he noticed my Eleanor Roosevelt knitting picture and asked me about it. “I just don’t get knitting.” he said. “Not why people do it, but how it works.”
He described to me something he’d seen on a cable show - Entrelac? “Yeah, that was it. Why wouldn’t you just make strips and weave them together instead of knitting little squares together?” As he asked, he understood. “Ooohhh, it would fall apart and you’d have to sew them all together anyway.” Software still running. “What’s the difference between a knit and a purl?” I whipped out my current project from my so called briefcase.
After watching the demonstration and refusing to try it himself, I showed him the socks I was wearing. He looked at them in shock and horror. “But you would have to do that wrapping the needle thing thousands of times!” (I wish I had been capable of some sort of binary humor.)
There my friends is the difference between the knitter and the non-knitter. Shock and horror, or just a few movies will do it.
How do you answer the “how long did it take you to knit that” question?
MLE
