Knitting

Knitting

I have been knitting practically my whole life and while I am not an expert knitter and far from it; it is something that I find enjoyable and relieves my stress levels. I learned how to knit from my grandmother when I was twelve years old and staying with her for a weekend. I was bored and she was sitting in her chair knitting a baby blanket for a friend and I asked her if she would teach me how. Knitting is not as easy as it looked and considering that I am left handed and my grandmother is right handed it was an even more difficult task to learn, to this day if people watch me knit it appears as if I am doing it upside down and backwards. Some might say that Knitting is boring and how could I possibly want to subject myself to such a tedious task, to this I disagree because knitting is not only fun it is functional, because when you are done with a project you have something tangible to keep you warm. Since I started knitting I would like to think that my skills have improved but since I can still only knit and purl; these are the two most basic stitches in kitting, I still have a lot to learn. Funny in all the years that I have been knitting I don't think I have ever made anything for myself. I always have the intentions of completing something I will use but end up giving it away. For the last few years I have been making scarves throughout the year and then donating them to homeless shelters around the holidays. Not only do I get to knit which I enjoy but I get to do something that makes my heart feel good.

Knitting has its own language and to list all the different terms and stitches would take me hours and honestly if you are not interested in knitting to begin with you would be bored to tears reading about it. I will however tell you about the basic process that a knitter goes through when starting a project and hopefully I can make it interesting. I call this the three step process at least it is for me, other knitters might have different methods. Actually it might be a four step process now that I am thinking about it.

Step one is deciding what I want to make and how much time I have to dedicate to a new project. I have a horrible habit of having multiple projects going at the same time, funny is I am not alone in this habit because every knitter I know is the same way. That is beside the point. So after I have decided what I want to make I move on to step two which is deciding on a color and type of yarn will work best. If you are using a pattern it will tell you what types of yarn work best and what gauge the needles need to be and how many skeins( a skein is just a tightly wrapped length of yarn usually in a ball shape) are appropriate to complete the pattern. I rarely use patterns because it takes too long to translate them for my left handedness. If I were an expert I might try my hand at writing patterns for left hander knitters. I am sure there would be a market

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