November 2017 - Ryan Collett

Hobbies v. Work

After reaching 50 (unceremoniously counted and not celebrated) videos, I’ve got all the YouTube ingredients down. Put some ALL CAPS words in your video title, don’t type or speak in complete sentences, if you do speak in complete sentences, make sure you chop them all up in the edit; and make sure you’re always launching a new series or rebranding yourself or something. That being said, I have a new video up called “WHAT I ACTUALLY KNIT: Cables & Diamonds Scarf” and if that doesn’t tick all those boxes, I don’t know what does.

So it’s a new series.

Now, I’ve started more knitting serieseseses on my YouTube channel than I’ve finished (why is that? There’s got to be some psychology behind the thrill of an amateur saying “This is the first in a new series of videos about ___” that someone should study), but this is one that I’m excited about and hope to keep building on. Building on very slowly because knitting but building nonetheless! As the title says, it’s all about what I’m actually doing with my time. What I actually like to knit when I’m not knitting for a tutorial.

And what is it I actually like to knit? I guess I’m still figuring that out. The actual number of knitting projects that I’ve truly sat down and knit for myself, for fun, for no other reason is very small. The actual number that I’ve actually finished? Even smaller. There’s maybe a hat and a scarf or two. So these “WHAT I ACTUALLY KNIT” (the caps are required in all instances of course) videos are a way of A: showing the world what real knitter really knits and B: forcing myself to commit to a project for once.

This project is a diamond cable pattern I’ve seen here and there. The video shows it off better than I can explain it.

The hardest part about the scarf? Finishing it. Since posting the video I’ve maybe added ten inches to the thing and oh my goshhhhh the desire to yank it apart and start something else is HIGH right now. I make mistakes, I get new ideas I want to incorporate, I get generally bored. If anything, knitting is about patience and actually tuckering down and working.

Probably Not But Who Knows

This is my first blog post. Isn’t it awful how we’ve reached a point of Being On The Internet where we have to qualify stuff like that? Isn’t it enough that these words just exist online? Why bother with dates?

The only thing blogs consist of most days is this:

[Address a nameless mass] + [apologize profusely for not having blogged in forever] + [talk about your rebanding]

I used to have a LiveJournal back in the day and I would say that the sweet memory of using that platform with all my friends is enough to energize me to keep up a regular blogging habit here, but I don’t think it is. Blogging, commenting, sharing—things used to be much more of a two-way street instead of shouting into a void. My LiveJournal in high school’s reach was 10 people—11 when my brother found it, then 10 again when I made it private. Is something like that possible anymore?

Not that that’s what I’m expecting this to be. This, what I’m writing right now, is promo letsbehonest.

Maybe that certain kind of small-sweetness on the internet is only for kids and can’t be replicated on Professional Branded Platforms. Is Snapchat the thing that provides that for kids? Probably not, but who knows.

Anyway.

That’s another thing all blogs consist of: [negation of previous paragraph] + “Anyway/Anywayyy”

Probably not, but who knows, anywayyyy. It’s like an FDA warning at the bottom of a drug ad. You want to make sure you can say “Well, I even said in the blog post that I didn’t know for sure” if someone calls you out on something. We don’t want to be wrong! I don’t even want to be wrong about likening it to an FDA warning. Is it an FDA warning or something else? Originally I had typed “Surgeon General’s warning” but that didn’t seem right, so I googled it and found out that a Surgeon General warning is for cigarette cartons and the warnings that play during drug commercials are mandated by the FDA but I’m still not sure if they can actually be called FDA warnings so probably not, but who knows anyway.

It’s a nerve wracking thing.