Oh, what a tangled web we … knit?
Today, or rather yesterday, I gave into the impulse to learn a new technique to deal with all the lovely yarn I’ve been creating with my recent obsession with spinning and dyeing and such. Not only did I obtain a job-lot of mohair (15kg worth actually) but I also picked up a book from the library about knitting.

Now I already crochet, and there is a certain similarity to the art of knitting – for instance neither crochet nor knitting was “women’s work” to any great extent during the middle ages, and even up till the eighteenth century when machines for knitting started to be used commercially, the creation of fabric from yarn through the use of almost any technique be it crochet, weaving or knitting was considered to be principally “man’s work”.

Over the years I have always thought it amusing that the knitting and crochet skills of my paternal grandmother had divided themselves between my sibling and myself. She knitted; I crocheted. Just recently I have spun a lot of interesting yarns and I would like some other options in the ‘fabrication’ of it.
So I went to the library (where else?) and borrowed a basic book on knitting. I mean, how difficult could a “…Dummies” book be? It was either that or “The Vogue Book”, and though I enjoy those magnificent Vogue patterns when I am sewing, it is only since I felt more confident in my sewing abilities that I enjoy tackling one of them, so I was not particularly confident in learning to knit from that particular source – later may be a different story.

Today I have spent the last few hours listening to a story on CD (“The Truth” by Terry Pratchet) It is easy on the ears and sufficiently distracting to the discomfort of sitting with sticks and yarn trying to trip one’s fingers into getting tangled. So far I have knitted a little sample thing (a swatch I believe they are called) consisting of garter and purl stitch.
This is probably not a big thing as samples go but, apart from a single dropped stitch that I have just noticed down in the early rows, I now have a three inch wide, five inch long bit of knitting flagging over my yarn basket like a lunar landing site.

And I feel quite proud of myself!