knitting in the dark

Contests at Skeins Her Way and Lotus Knits! have inspired me to write about how I learned to knit. My maternal grandmother and both of her daughters (my mother and my aunt - she calls herself Ant Kate [sic]) are knitters. My mother knit me and my little brother some of the cutest sweaters and vests when we were little. There are pictures at my parents’ house in Seattle, but I live in Brooklyn and the concept of scanning is foreign to my mother. The pair of sweaters I remember best were navy and had my and my brother’s initials across the chest in signal flags - they were so cool, but we couldn’t tell them apart, so my mother smartly put one stripe at the wrist on one sweater and two stripes on the other. I think I may have been about five at the time. Around that same time I wanted my mother teach me how to knit… I was in kindergarten and I remember taking my newly acquired needles and yarn with me to my friends’ houses after school and their parents thinking I had the oddest hobby for such a little kid. I think I completed about 6″ square of garter stitch in a chunky light blue wool on like US 8’s before I forgot about the whole wanting-to-knit thing.

When I was about nine I went through another knitting phase; my mother was knitting socks for my father with some sort of stranded colorwork - I think it was little fish. I wanted to work on what she was doing and not on my own project, so she let me sit on her lap and work on those socks and on a cream sweater with big magenta roses (don’t judge - we’re talking mid-1980’s here!) that she was knitting for herself. She’s only recently admitted that she had to rip back all the parts that she had let me knit to redo them…

The next time I picked needles up was in December of 2001. I was visiting my Ant Kate’s house during my Christmas vacation and I was about to study abroad in London and only knew one other person going. She found me some needles and some beautiful and vibrant red wool and reminded me how to cast on, to knit, and to purl. I wanted to make a scarf (like every beginning knitter) so I decided upon moss stitch to combat the curling edge problem and to keep it interesting. I found that knitting was just like riding a bike… I remembered things about tension my mother had taught me at five. I’m glad I picked something that would take a lot of time (I throw yarn with my right hand - moss stitch is terribly time consuming that way), because I was addicted to it - I would stay up late at night knitting and watching German MTV. I remember making mistakes and having no one there to tell me how to fix it… I didn’t realize that I could have just found any yarn store and they would help me figure it out! I had to figure out how to fix dropped stitches while keeping the stitch pattern right and how to put stitches back on the needle after ripping and how to bind off all without an experienced guide.

And when I finished the scarf, which was really much too wide for my tastes (I still have it somewhere, but I think it’s in Seattle), I decided I could do anything and wanted to try a sweater. I went to Liberty of London to check out my options. Options at Liberty include: Rowan. And that’s it. But I didn’t find myself wanting for any other options - Rowan yarn is incredibly beautiful and I find the patterns easy to follow. I found in A Season’s Tale a sweater whose shape appealed to me and decided I would knit in the recommended yarn but would add stripes for interest. I think I actually did a gauge swatch that first time (but I certainly didn’t wash it) before I cast on and knit up the four pieces of the sweater. I found directions for mattress stitch on the internet while on the computer at the library, seamed it up, and wore it proudly. I still wear that sweater even though the fit leaves something to be desired. Oh, and blocking? Yeah, that’s something I’ve just started doing recently - FIVE years later!

(Sorry for the crappy pictures-of-pictures, but my scanner refuses to communicate with my new computer!)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 27th, 2007 at 10:49 am and is filed under knitting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.