Beyond knitting instructions: you did WHAT with your knitting needle?

Awhile ago, the center weight of my grandfather’s clock slipped off the chain, and the chain slipped off its sprocket wheel.

The “how” isn’t important. I’m grateful no one was hurt — and there’s no permanent damage to the clock.

If you’ve ever wound a grandfather’s clock, you know there are three chains with weights. The ones on the ends are for the chimes and striking mechanism. The center one runs the clock. And of course it’s the most difficult to reposition! Hard to impossible to reach with your fingers, and very limited room inside the cabinet to manipulate any tool.

This woodcut gives you an idea of how challenging this task can be:

You need to be working in a space less than 6 inches wide, over a side sprocket wheel, and between horizontal posts to get  to the center .

I looked online for instructions to reposition the chain. While it’s a fairly simple procedure to replace one of the side chains through the cabinet side doors, the center chain is more challenging. The online suggestions involved taking the clock mechanism out of the case, replacing the chain, then replacing the mechanism in the cabinet.

Yeah, right!

I’m not sure I could reach the screws or bolts to remove the mechanism even if I wanted to. Certainly there must be another way. I couldn’t find one, so took a last long look at the chain off its wheel, and decided to do something else. Of course I ended up knitting.

Knitting truly does sooth the soul. Plus, as I was working it occurred to me that the knitting stitches are not unlike the links in a chain.

Then, I had an aha moment!

Grabbing my pair of number 3 straight needles, I realized I could reach the chain! With manipulations involving a combination of knitting and eating with chopsticks, I balanced the chain between the needles. After some practice, it fell right into place. I could wind the clock, and it started running. PHEW!

I think the clockmaker, a child of The Great Depression who knew about making do with what you have on hand, would approve. Some knitting gurus know how to improvise:

“A #6 aluminum needle has been known to furnish an excellent emergency shear pin for an outboard motor.” – Elizabeth Zimmermann

How about you? Share your unusual uses for knitting needles or crafting tools in the comments. You never know, you might just help someone else find a solution to a tricky problem.

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What do you do when knitting instructions don’t work?

A few days ago, I started two knitting projects, with patterns I haven’t used before.

Only one had a knitting gauge; the other one’s knitting instructions were well — pithy.

I think of myself as an intermediate to advanced knitter. Usually I can figure out the knitting instructions as I go. This time, however, both patterns presented challenges. And after a few inches, I realized they weren’t going well. Time to restart.

So, I frogged the knitting. You know, ripped out the stitches. [Everyone say it quickly: rip it, rip it, rip it! ]

And the result is:

At one point I would have grieved for the lost stitches. Now, I look at the yarn as recyclable, and ready for the same project, or a new one.

With time, I’ve become convinced that sometimes the instructions are wrong. And sometimes the designer just doesn’t knit the same way I do. Which is okay, after all we’re all individuals.  Which I suspect is one reason knitting is so comforting. In a world that wants to make us all fit into round holes, it’s nice to find a place where the square peg can, well just be a square peg.

And you know, it could easily be me. It’s just possible with the recent extreme weather we’ve had, and some personal and professional distractions that I didn’t concentrate enough on the knitting instructions to get them right. And you know, that’s okay too.

Knitting can be challenging, but it should always, always be fun. When it stops being fun, that’s the time to put down the knitting needles and do something else. Whether you come back in a few minutes or a few days or longer, it doesn’t matter. I suspect though that once you find the rhythm of the needles —what some call “the zone” — you’ll be back.

Just make sure it stays fun.

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