Brioche Knitting

Some of you have heard my story about knitting socks but I’ll share the short version here just in case someone hasn’t heard or doesn’t remember.

I learned to knit while in high school, knitted a bit in college but then put it away and didn’t knit much at all after that. I probably never touched a knitting needle from about 1980 til 2005. In probably 2004, I got in my head that I wanted to knit socks. You know how I get on a kick and won’t stop. I must have talked about it way too much on the blog because a friend sent me a package and it contained a pattern, yarn and needles and she basically said “Stop saying you want to knit socks and start knitting socks!” I couldn’t remember how to cast on and in 2005, there weren’t a lot of youtube videos. We were living in Kentucky and had a Hobby Lobby. I would hang out on the yarn aisles and everyone who came in, I would say “Do you knit?” All I needed was for someone to show me how to cast on! Finally someone said “No, but there’s a group of ladies who meet at the Methodist church on Thursday mornings and they knit!” Ahh . . I’ll go to the Methodist church on Thursday morning and I did.

The only way to cast on that I had ever heard of was long tail. There were probably 10 ladies there and the first 5 or 6 used different cast on methods. Nope, not what I remember. Nope, not how I did it. Finally, a lady started casting on and she was using the long tail method and it all came back to me. She showed me how to read my pattern, which had multiple sizes and instructions for several weights of yarn.

I had never knitted in the round or with double point needles, nor had I ever knitted anything other than worsted weight yarn. Honestly, I probably ripped back and started over 50 or more times. Once Vince said to me . . why don’t you give up? Oh, my goodness! My husband has rarely seen me give up on anything and he’s asking me to give up. He thought I would never figure it out . . but I did.

Fast forward eleven years! The What the Fade Mystery Knit Along has brioche. I had started a shawl a while back that has brioche but haven’t gotten that far along . . at least not to the brioche part yet.

Friday I began trying to do the two color brioche. It was so Greek. I watched the videos, I read and re-read the instructions. I watched the videos again. I watched different videos. I started and ripped back a dozen times. I decided I was tired . . I’d work on it again on Saturday. I didn’t have much better luck on Saturday. Vince was watching football on TV and we don’t have enough bandwidth for me to watch a video while he’s watching football so who do you think had to stop using the internet? Yep .. me! During commercial breaks, I was trying to watch 60 seconds of the brioche video and getting the evil eye from Vince. After another dozen or so starts, and unravels, I decided I’d wait til Sunday. Vince knew I was pretty aggravated (1) with my attempt at brioche and (2) not getting my fair share of internet time on Saturday so he declared that I could watch as much youtube as I needed to on Sunday. Somehow, on Sunday, it finally clicked for me.

You knit every row twice, once using blue, and once using brown.

Mine isn’t perfect so after taking the pictures, I ripped back to the beginning . . one last time I hope, and started over. I got back to this point again and it’s easy going now. I’m wondering why I couldn’t get it the first time . . or the 50th time! One lady on Ravelry said “I only had to rip back once!” I won’t bother to post how many times I ripped back.

What I really want to know is . . how do people think up stuff like this? It’s really fun and I’d like to try something else using brioche. Oh . . yes . . finish the shawl I started. It has brioche!