Monthly Archives: April 2010

Where do you like to indulge in your craft? Is your favourite arm chair your little knitting cubby area, or do you prefer to ‘knit in public’? Do you like to crochet in the great outdoors, perhaps, or knit in the bath, or at the pub?

Before I was dead to the world at 10pm every evening, I used to love to knit in bed. There was a time when Mr B was travelling a lot for work and I could indulge myself without him moaning that the light was stopping him sleeping, so once the boys were settled in bed, I’d get myself organised with a project, a cup of tea and maybe a biscuit (or three) and set up camp in bed with the radio on and knit for a few hours. Or read knitting books and change my mind every five minutes on what I wanted my next project to be.

These days, I have to knit with a sleeping baby balanced on my lap. Which isn’t easy, but better than not knitting at all, which would be tragic. I have a large bag by the sofa with pretty much everything I could need in it, so that I don’t have to move to get scissors or a smaller needle. I am also aware that once Rose is crawling, everything will need to be on a very high shelf to stop her deciding that my lovely birch dpns make interesting toys.

Is there a skill related to your hobby that you hope to learn one day? maybe you’re a crocheter who’d also like to knit? Maybe you’d like to learn to knit continental, knit backwards, try cables or attempt stranded colourwork.

As I’m pretty relaxed about trying new knitting techniques, I think I’d have to say that I wish I could crochet better. I’ve tried to get into it a couple of times and I can make a reasonable granny square. But what I can’t get the hang of is making chains and rectangular pieces. I end up with too few or too many chains, and my rows get smaller and smaller and it all looks a bit crap, quite frankly. I even treated myself to a beautiful, rainbow-coloured set of Susan Bates Silvalume hooks, like the sock needles I have, to tempt me into being a better hooker.

What I need is a project that is so mouthwatering that I HAVE to make it. I’m pretty much in love with the fantastic lace that you can produce with a hook, and I’d love to try something like this, by the supremely talented Kai. I guess it’s something that needs to be added to the “when the baby is older” list for now.

Blog about a pattern or project which you aspire to. Whether it happens to be because the skills needed are ones which you have not yet acquired, or just because it seems like a huge undertaking of time and dedication, most people feel they still have something to aspire to in their craft. If you don’t feel like you have any left of the mountain of learning yet to climb, say so!

This is an easy one for me.

That, dear readers, is St Brigid, from Alice Starmore’s Aran Knitting. Oh how I want to be like the model in the book, and skip across the mountains in unsuitable heels and a skirt wearing my aran sweater and a jaunty hat (though her bag is clearly not stuffed with nappies, spare cardigans and squeaky toys, unlike mine).

Now, anyone who looks through my FOs and sees steeked sweaters and stranded knitting might scoff at the idea that an aran sweater – in one colour! – could be something that makes me pause for a moment. But I am not a big cable knitter. Now that I can cable without a cable needle I am more inclined to choose cabled projects, and if you’ve never tried cabling without a cable needle, I heartily recommend it. Just Google “cabling without a cable needle” for thousands of results. It is fiddly at first, but after practise I promise you will find it easier than playing hunt-the-cable-needle (I ended up sticking mine down my cleavage after use as I once left the house after forgetting to remove one from behind my ear and got strange looks from passers-by – strangely enough, I never forgot to remove it from my bra!) but even so, each row is far more time consuming that just knitting stocking stitch with two colours.

But of all the Starmore patterns I lust after, this is the one that makes me sigh just that little bit more wistfully and spend just a little more time playing with shade cards to choose the perfect shade of purple colour. Whether the fact that it is unattainable adds to the yearning, I don’t know, but I am determined that once I have a copy of the book in my eager hands, this sweater will be mine. *insert manic cackle*

I have a plan, you see, to get the yarn for my Christmas present – the proper, Alice Starmore yarn, no less – and then start the sweater in January next year and make it a year-long project. Because notwithstanding the sheer intensity of the cabling, I also have the matter of a small person who is getting rapidly bigger. A sleeve in a month/two months is my vague aim. Will be interesting to experience the reality!

How and when did you begin knitting/crocheting? was it a skill passed down through generations of your family, or something you learned from Knitting For Dummies? What or who made you pick up the needles/hook for the first time? Was it the celebrity knitting ‘trend’ or your great aunt Hilda?

I probably was six or seven years old when I learnt to knit, probably after nagging my mum to teach me. She can knit, but not on the scale of my grandma who always seemed to be churning out jumpers and cardigans. Even my grandad could knit a little; he made a garter stitch blanket for my pram when I was a baby. I have memories of balls of dishcloth cotton and wanting to furnish all my family with handmade dishcloths for Christmas presents, but never getting further than half a square done because it took soooo long. At Infants’ school we also knitted a doll’s sweater which was just rectangles and squares of garter stitch. At the end of term all the sweaters magically appeared all sewn up and finished off and that probably makes it my first FO!

Other than knitting a couple garter stitch strips for doll scarves, knitting didn’t feature heavily in my life after that and I didn’t pick up the needles again until I was expecting DS1 and then DS2. Both times I knitted a few acrylic baby cardigans and then packed the needles and yarn away. As the boys grew up, I started knitting them the odd winter hat or sweater, but I was still a relatively slow knitter and each item seemed to take forever. Not to mention that I didn’t bother swatching so everything was on the large side…

But it was really discovering sock knitting in 2005 that changed my life. I literally learnt to knit in the round and then never looked back. Suddenly all the techniques that I had thought were beyond me seemed far easier. I could knit in the round with dpns – I was a Knitting Genius. Now I just knit whatever appeals to me without wondering whether it will be “beyond my capabilities”. The only restriction I currently have is time!