Beginning Knitting

I wrote my last post about learning to knit, and about how it reminded me of learning other things. I'm probably not what you would call a "quick study". I want to remember my earliest struggles. I hope to keep going with this knitting thing.

Over the week, as I continued my efforts, I started remembering things about being in a knitting club in Jr. High. I guess I would have been about 12 or 13. That has been a long time ago, but memories started coming back. I think someone in my club, named Lucy or Lucinda, told me that they liked my knitting because of the texture. I wanted to see what everyone had down. I feel sure that mine was full of mistakes, dropped and added stitches. I think I was having the same problems with my knitting back then that I have been having now. I never could go for very many rows without mistakes. So long ago, was I knitting the same way? Is that because my mind remembers in some subterranean way what I had learned back then.

My grandmother knitted, did she try to teach me how? I don't specifically remember. Did I pick up some of her methods just by watching her? I can't say for sure.

So back to the present. It was very frustrating at first, but then I finally did start to get the hang of it.

I was trying so hard with my first knitting lesson. After 2 hours I had completed all of about 5 or 6 rows (I'm guessing)of knitting and then I my teacher showed me how to purl. I purled okay under her watchful eye. When I came home, I knitted a bit more and then tried purling and knitting on the same row. For some reason the purling made my knitting very tight. So tight that I could hardly fit the needles in. I found that if I just skipped a stitch or two it was much easier! A few holes could look decorative right? Ha! What a mess that was. Dropping the stitches caused, not holes, but long loops. When I had gone a few more rows, I decided to to unravel back to take out the ugly row. But I didn't really know how to unravel. I have a book that says unraveling is no great disaster, and so I plunged in. I started unraveling and couldn't stop. So, of course, I unraveled the whole thing!

Several more attempts at casting on, knitting and purling and unraveling, because it was so tight, the whole lot, I finally gave up for the day (night), it was about 3 o'clock in the morning.

Thankfully, it got easier after that first day. I think I was in too much of a hurry.

I'd nearly gotten a dish cloth finished and then I set it down somewhere out of sight. I haven't done any knitting for several days. But, I really want to finish it. And do another. And I was right when I told someone that my knitting would probably be unconventional, I just seem to be that kind of gal.

Learning to Knit

I'm learning to knit. I was inspired by a blogger who knits and does a lot of other cool things like making soap and bread. I knew a lady in my quilt guild is a knitter and I asked her if she could help me get started.

I don't think I could have figured it out without her patient help. I seemed to me that it would be easy enough, right, just wind some yarn around some needles, learn the shorthand that is used for the patterns and go. But like many things that I have thought looked it easy and really are easy once you get the hang of it, it wasn't quite that easy.

Like riding a bike, that took me a really long to time to learn. My poor Dad! Some kids learn in a day, I've heard. I think after quite awhile Dad decided to give up the first time and bought me training wheels. I don't remember how long it eventually took. But I did learn to ride a bike.

And then there was learning to swim. It looked easy. I went to for lessons at the local high school. They had an excellent program that allowed high school students to teach primary school children. All the new kids were assembled at one end of the pool. We were asked how many already knew how to swim. I raised my hand. We were asked to demonstrate our abilities, one by one, by jumping in and swimming across the pool. My turn came, I jumped in and nearly drowned. After that occasion they stopped taking it for granted that kids who said they knew how to swim actually did.

There was me learning to drive! Oh my! My Dad, a driving instruction class at the high school and private lessons, some how managed to get me a driver's license. The roads were still not exactly safe. Not once, but twice, I turned on to the wrong side of a divided highway, I forgot to put on might lights constantly. I managed to drive around for several years without any accidents by some miracle. I didn't drive for many years and then a very patient friend helped me, really taught me finally to be a safe driver.

And then there was me learning to type.

I don't think I could have ever been a secretary (which I was for many years), if it wasn't for computers. How did they do it in the days of typewriters? It was quite a learning curve for me learning to type. That was what I was thinking about after my first lesson in knitting. I did learn how to type, eventually.

They say that learning something new helps keep your brain healthy. And I don't think knitting could be too dangerous!