Saturday, September 30, 2006

Day One

Okay, first post. Wow. I have a klog. Sweet.

Anyway, I suppose the first post should be about me. Or, rather, it is going to be about me, because I'm in charge of these things, really.

My mom taught me to knit when I was five. I think she did so because I was being annoying and asking a gazillion questions about what she was doing, and she finally found some cheap yellow yarn and some needles she didn't particularly like, cast on, showed me the knit stitch, and parked me on the couch.

I struggled with that yellow yarn. It was an epic battle, really. I was quiet for days, and when I reached the end of the yarn, I had a not-quite-rectangular, extremely holey, very ugly swatch.

I vowed I would never knit again.

About five years later, I found myself with a box of my mom's knitting supplies and no clue what to do with them. I decided to try to knit again, but since my mother had passed away, I would have to teach myself.

Undeterred, I bought some bright, neon pink yarn. I'd never been taught how to cast on, so I made slip knots...for every. Single. Stitch. I also had no concept of gauge, so I figured a hundred was a nice round number and we would do that for a hat.

I knitted along for a few rows, and the years since my last experience had been kind to me. This time, I didn't drop any stitches, didn't create any more, didn't reverse direction mid-row (this might have been aided by knitting in the round...). In fact, I didn't even twist the stitches. Looking back, I'm rather impressed with myself.

Of course, all this is negated by the fact that, two inches into the "hat", I thought it was time for decreasing--four stitches per row. It was a relatively smooth decrease, but it was much, much too soon to ditch those stitches. I ended up with a bright neon pink Yamaka.

By this time, though, the knitting bug had bitten--hard. I had never heard of a yarn shop, so I bought my yarn at Value Village. When I did hear of yarn shops, I made fun of people who would spend so much money on yarn (I know better now. I really, really do).

Over the years I've refined my skill. The slip-knot cast-on was first to change. I found a couple books and taught myself purling, patterning, cabling, intarsia, entrelac. Recently, I taught myself fair isle. I rarely follow patterns because I didn't have any when I was learning (I do, however, drool pretty heavily over pictures...).

That pretty much brings us up to now. I wish I had some pictures of my earlier work, but right now there's a bit of technology gap between my camera and my computer--namely, a cord is missing. As soon as the technology learns to get along, I'll be adding pictures to all my posts (because, really, we all know klogs are all about the knitting porn).