So…I was bored the other day and started meandering about in WordPress. A blog post caught my eye…a post by The Mad Knitter called “Knitting Bucket List”. Considering how many things I see and ooh and aah over, I wondered if I really had a knitting bucket list and if I didn’t…perhaps I should. Sadly, while Ravelry has favourites and a queue, it doesn’t really have a spot for that, but I digress.
I think a bucket list should be “stretch” goals. I mean, sure, my queue has lots of things I’d like to knit. That’s what my queue is for. For me, a bucket list would contain patterns that I love that would contain something I deem to be a real challenge for whatever reason.
So I started thinking…what would I put on my knitting bucket list? The very first thing that sprang to mind? The socks that made me become a sock knitter three years ago, and that I still have not got the courage to start: Kate Atherley‘s My Vampire Boyfriend. I fell in love with these the moment that I saw them, all pretty and red and heart-y and cable-y. They are basically Rayna in a sock. Yet…each time I contemplate casting them on, I freeze and cast on something simple instead.
How awesome are these?? (Photo by Sarah Fay from Knitty.com)
On the shawl side of things…I’d have to go with Lucy Hague’s Taliesin. My friend Jocelyne linked to it on a Ravelry board that she and I moderate together and I literally gasped out loud. Now this one, I actually have the pattern for. Shireen decided she was going to knit it and sent it to me as a gift with the three word message, “Misery loves company”, a reflection on how hard it was going to be, not the finished item, of course.
Just look at all that Celtic knotwork! (Photo courtesy of lucyhague.co.uk)
Also on the shawl front is Cheryl Oberle’s Irish Diamond Shawl. I fell in love with this one as my friend Caryn made one years ago and wore it to work with great frequency for a long time. It’s so pretty but SO huge. I expect I’d buy a commercial yarn just so that I didn’t have to worry about obtaining five or six matching skeins of indie dyed yarn to make up the prescribed 2200 yards of yarn. I can’t imagine having to alternate skeins on this pattern.
The last thing on my bucket list? A sweater for me. This is another area in which I have no excuse. I have a code that was a gift from my friend Jenn for a Custom Fit sweater by Amy Herzog, a set of Custom Fit measurements just waiting to be entered into the software and not one but two sweater quantities of yarn. For some reason, I balk at the thought of casting it on. I think I have lived for so long with the fear of spending all that time knitting something that won’t fit, that I can’t bring myself to believe those who say that the Custom Fit software makes all of those fears null and void. I am a knitting wuss…there, I said it. Someday, I’ll get brave enough to start. Today is not that day. Tomorrow is not looking good, either!
So…what’s on your knitting bucket list?
First Light Handcrafts 
Taliesin for sure! I’ve also got a super beautiful, complex looking lace shawl called ‘Dandelions on a Meadow’ that is totally not beyond my skills, but that someone I always balk at casting on. Finally I’m with you on the sweater thing. I knitted one once, it was too tight and it broke my heart. I frogged it for the yarn and did other stuff but have been scared since to try again!
“totally not beyond my skills, but that someone I always balk at casting on.”
See? That’s just how I feel about My Vampire Boyfriend. Not beyond my skills at all…but my inner lazy knitter keeps me from taking the plunge!
Just do it friend! You can do all of these!
I am sure I can. I just don’t know if it’s fear or laziness or a combo of both that prevents me! I suspect the socks will be the first of the four projects to make it onto needles. In fact, I even have a skein of red sock yarn wound at home.
Why don’t you put more than one project on the go at once? The socks that got me into sock knitting were Water for the Elephants, and although I love the one I’ve finished with all my heart and sole (!) I’m only half-way through the second sock, but I’ve been casting on other socks in the meantime. I don’t mind that it’s going to take me a year to finish it, so long as it gets finished. I should definitely write a knitting bucket list, but perhaps with a goal for it to be finished by the end of the summer!
Hey there! I usually do have several different projects on the go…in fact, right now, I have a rather embarrassing number. But I like the idea of trying your method. I tend to be a product knitter, not a process one…so I tend not to start things unless I intend to finish them soon (that being said, what happens once they are ON the needles is another story!) But your way might work 🙂