Saturday, 30 April 2011

Knitting woes

My grandmother taught me to knit when I was about 8 years old. She also taught me to crochet and I crocheted two single bed-sized blankets from my neighbours' leftover wool before I was 10. I knitted a few things as a teenager, including a number of scarves and jerseys. Then I fell in love with counted cross stitch and attacked it in a somewhat obsessed manner for the next 15 or so years.

While I was a classroom teacher, I taught a class of 9-10 year olds to knit. Most of them specialised in creating the lace effect, ie holes everywhere, but one or two boys in particular excelled at the art and went on to knit various items of clothing for their families and also for me. I wonder if any of them now knit as young adults?

During that time, I knitted a couple of warm jerseys and wore them in the years following, but that was the last time I picked up knitting needles. These days, knitting has become fashionable again and knitting circles are popping up all over the place. Having just about finished what will probably be my last large-scale cross stitch project, I've thought about knitting something for this winter. But what to knit?

I spent time looking at patterns in four different knitting shops this week; no luck. I thought about knitting accessories, rather than full on jersey-type projects, but other than baby stuff (no thanks) or knitted toys, everything looked a bit too intensive. A friend suggested I knit a throw rug. Great idea! One or two patterns caught my eye but they were part of books costing $20+, which I thought was quite excessive for someone who was really just after a single pattern. I obviously don't look like a serious knitter, as not one person in any of these shops asked if they could help in any way. *sigh*

The Twitterverse has been helpful and introduced me to Ravelry, Knitty, Free Knit Patterns, The Daily Knitter and Lion Brand Yarn patterns. I have spent this afternoon trawling through them in the hope of finding just the right project to start on. I've made a little bit of progress - not there yet, though.

How about you - do you knit? Do you have a current knitting project? Where are good places to go for knitting ideas and inspiration?

2 comments:

liltoastfairy said...

my mum recently taught my daughter (10yrs) how to knit. Watching them inspired me to pick up the needles again after a failed scarf attempt 8 years ago. I'm trying another scarf - it's going better this time. Basic wool, basic stitch only helps.
Mum has a pattern for a blanket made up of squares of different stitches and colours, block squares. Me and Miss 10 are gonna do the easy ones, and mum'll do the more complicated ones. Then we just stitch it altogether. Should work well. Hopefully!! :O)

Anonymous said...

I knit and crochet. I also belong to Ravelry and a group on it called Kilmarnock Knitters, we meet every Monday and Knit and Natter. At present I am crocheting a blanket and am unsure who it will be for yet. I love to keep busy and this is something I can do whilst watching TV, travelling or sitting in the sun, almost anywhere.