{"id":66,"date":"2006-02-25T18:40:00","date_gmt":"2006-02-26T01:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/crafting-a-life.com\/MamaOKnits\/2006\/02\/25\/thoughts-on-learning-to-knit\/"},"modified":"2006-02-25T18:40:00","modified_gmt":"2006-02-26T01:40:00","slug":"thoughts-on-learning-to-knit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crafting-a-life.com\/mamaoknits\/thoughts-on-learning-to-knit\/","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts on Learning to Knit"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I was a child I learned to knit from my grandmother.
For so many of us that is the beginning of a long and fulfilling relationship with knitting. For me, it was a disaster.<\/p>\n

I was much better at crocheting. I stuck to the single hook for ages. <\/p>\n

I had a brief fling with knitting again in high school. I had been cast as Anne in The Diary of Anne Frank<\/span> and when I read that Anne gave her father a knitted scarf for Hanukkah I realized that to be honest in my portrayal I needed to knit the scarf myself.<\/p>\n

This was my first big mistake…in both acting and knitting.<\/p>\n

The line, as I recall it goes something like this: <\/p>\n

Anne: (apologetically, as her father reacts to the scarf) I knitted it in the dark…out of odds and ends…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My delivery, I’m sure, was perfection. Not so my knitting. The scarf received laughs.
Every night.
For two weeks.<\/p>\n

I was thirty two before I tried to knit again. <\/p>\n

When I did I learned from an aptly named knitting store owner, Prophet of the Knitting Salon<\/a> in Park Slope, Brooklyn.
My friend Jamie took me there. I insisted I was a crocheter and cross stitcher, but not a knitter.
“All you need,” Prophet said, “is some wooden needles and some real wool.”
Of course you’d say that, I thought. They’re more expensive.
As though Prophet could (appropriately) read my mind, “If it doesn’t work out for you, bring them back.”
Ah.
An offer I couldn’t refuse.
I took handspun, hand dyed yarn home and some GORGEOUS (now discontinued) Black Walnut Brittany Knitting Needles (13’s, still have ’em) and went home to knit my husband a scarf.<\/p>\n

And…<\/p>\n

I taught myself wrong. For whatever reason, Prophet failed to explain to me that I was actually and in fact, twisting and untwisting my stitches. Years later I would find that Annie Modesitt made a name for herself dubbing what I was also naturally doing Combination Knitting<\/span>. My knitting looked normal, but decreases were messy and made no sense to me as written in patterns. I eventually learned to knit a more traditional Continental style; decreases were revelatory and socks became my friend. I also learned to knit Continental and British at the same time so I could change colors more effectively.<\/p>\n

To Be Continued…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was a child I learned to knit from my grandmother.For so many of us that is the beginning of a long and fulfilling relationship with knitting. For me, it was a disaster. I was much better at crocheting. I stuck to the single hook for ages. I had a brief fling with knitting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-fun"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crafting-a-life.com\/mamaoknits\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crafting-a-life.com\/mamaoknits\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crafting-a-life.com\/mamaoknits\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crafting-a-life.com\/mamaoknits\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crafting-a-life.com\/mamaoknits\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crafting-a-life.com\/mamaoknits\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crafting-a-life.com\/mamaoknits\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crafting-a-life.com\/mamaoknits\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crafting-a-life.com\/mamaoknits\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}