Knitting Meme!

[lwood]

(A meme is an idea, not just something everyone else is doing on LJ -- although "something everyone on my friends list is doing" is an example of a particularly viral meme. 'k? 'k.)

Wow, knitting's gotten really popular lately. I caved in against my usual aversion to "Idiot" and "Dummy" books and picked up The Complete Idiot's Guide to Knitting and Crocheting. It's actually been quite useful, and I was thankful to have found a single volume with both items.

Also, picked up a beginner book (with a less demeaning name) in another handicraft. Did one of the projects from it last night, and the completed thingy will be a present for lferion. Actually, I pretty much bought the book because of the project on the cover, which is very much a thing she'd enjoy.


But back to knitting...

I turned up at the Knitting Basket, a nice little knitting supply and yarn storn up in Montclair. I approached the counter and said:

"Hi, I'm buying a set of needles for a real beginner. I mean, someone who can just about spell knit, but not much more?"

"Is this a child, or...?"

I raised my hand somewhat sheepishly, "Me, ma'am."

"Ah! Well... we like bamboo needles, sizes 7, 8, or 9."

Yeah, yeah. Even though the size 9 bamboo needles of a reasonably medium length were cheaper than damn near anything else, you're all still going to say I'm predictable, only it might be that pearlshadow will blame Oya as Queen of the Marketplace instead of Odin as Farma-Tyr, God of Cargoes. 8-P

So, anyway, I had a couple skeins of cheapass Red Heart acrylic at home, so I pored over the book, did a sample piece or two to discover what some various castons were like, what "knit" and "purl" were, why dropped stitches stuck, etc. Then I got razzed for continually undoing my work -- hey! I'm not going to charge forward until I have the basics done, so bite me!

I'm nearly done with a long, skinny scarf in worsted-weight acrylic. 3x3 rib, 27 stitches across, striped in nine rows each of alternating dark blue and silvery grey. That taught me a lot of nice basic lessons, including "hey, I can take this to rituals and noboby will bitch, which makes it way cooler than, say, fidgeting randomly." Once that's done (hm, maybe a pair of ladies I know on the East Coast could appreciate this...), Diana (who has knitted like half a dozen scarves and sent them to friends all around the country) and I will start chugging through Hogwarts school scarves in house colors. This will teach me about knitting in the round and, probably, knitting in the dark.

We shall, of course, start with a pair of Ravenclaw scarves, and Fiona's on the list for a Slytherin, and we may just have to send a Hufflepuff to George Hirsch (trance class alpha test people will know why)...

It's like fidgeting, only you get something. 8-)

-- Lorrie

Comments

[bergtagen.livejournal.com]

Socks can be a fashion statement, if they're done properly. If you make 'em long enough, they become stockings. Mmmmm, stockings. Also, dpn's can be used for mittens and gloves, as mentioned, and hats and bags and sweaters and just about anything else you'd use circulars for. One of the earliest pictorial depictions of knitting show Mary knitting a teensy shirt for Jesus using dpn's, and a lot of the gorgeous early stuff like Charlemagne's silk tunic and liturgical stuff was undoubtedly knit on dpn's.