Some sort of magic

I decided to venture out of my comfort zone and knit something that I don't normally knit. I decided to make a garment. And I figure the best way to learn to knit something new is to start small. And what can be smaller then a baby? So I'm making Milo, a baby vest/top. I figure it won't take that long to knit, it's something where I won't have to worry about gauge and swatching, because if the garment doesn't fit a baby, they will just grow and it will eventually fit them. Yep, I just dove right in, no swatching at all.

Because this is one of my first times ever knitting a garment (I have made one skirt for myself and one baby top before many many years ago), I tried to follow the rules of a good knitter. Okay, I didn't swatch, but I tried to follow one of the other rules that good knitters are supposed to do. I read the pattern all the way through before casting on. I admit, I rarely do this, but I wanted to make sure I got this right the first time around.

I actually read the directions all the way through 3 times. Because for the life of me, I did not understand how it was possible to get shoulder straps from the instructions.  According to Rav, this pattern has been knit at least 9,000 times. If there was an error about this, it would have been spotted by now. So I decided to blindly trust the instructions. Besides, I'm really not a garment knitter, so what do I know about garment construction.

So I started knitting Milo, and I got to the shoulder strap section, and all the sudden I could see how it was going to come together. This was one of those moments, where I really felt knitting is truly magical. I felt clever and smart (really the designer is clever and smart for coming up with the pattern), but it was so cool to see my knitting transform in front of my eyes. It was a blob of knitting before and all the sudden after one clever row, I could see the shoulder straps! Knitting never ceases to amaze me.