Three years ago (it may realistically be closer to four, but that seems scary to me), my fellow teacher Zayne taught me how to knit. As I've mentioned before, I'd been a life-long crocheter, and I was ready for something new.
I went over to her house on a Saturday night...as teachers, there wasn't a lot of going out. (Eh, who am I kidding...I would much rather spend a night doing needlecrafts than going out anyway). She showed me the basic stitches, gave me a thick brown yarn to work on, and let me have at it. I spent about an hour and a half feeling as if I had no control over my hands. The needles just didn't
feel right, and I could sense that there was a way in which they uncomfortable process was supposed to feel fluid, but I wasn't there yet.
The next week, Zayne took me to a yarn shop, and helped me pick out needles and yarn. "You want bamboo needles. They feel good when you use them."
"Can't we just go to Hobby Lobby and get cheap yarn?" I asked.
She gasped in horror. You don't want acrylic going through your fingers. You want something that feels
nice."
I shrugged, and we picked out some discount soft cotton yarn that would be good for practicing on with my new bamboo needles.
When I started knitting, one of the first things I realized was that you use so much less yarn to made the same length of fabric than you would use crocheting. Knitting is much less bulky, whereas in crochet, each stitch involves several twists of the yarn, so it just takes more. But as a result of this difference, knitters tend to be much snobbier about their yarn -- because they can afford to be. It takes less yarn to make a sweater knitting than it does crocheting -- same with afghans, scarves, etc.
I still try to work on the cheap, because my life involves a certain degree of frugality. But when I knit, I can appreciate a nice wool in a way that I don't when I crochet.
A couple weeks ago, I got a coupon from Creative Habitat, one of our craft stores here in Burlington. They just opened a new store, so they were sending out $5 off anything. I went to peruse their yarn selection, which involves some nicer fibers than our local Michael's, and found a beautiful chunky wool in a gorgeous red/purple eggplant color.
Isn't that just to die for?
When I started working with it, I had to do some experimenting, since the texture of the yarn isn't even -- parts of it are spun much tighter than others, which gives it a fun, chunky, uneven look. I ended up making a scarf out of it, but as happens when mixing techniques, it had a weird rolling of the fabric where I mixed garter and stockinette stitches. (These are just different combination of your basic knit and purl stitches, but they yield very different-looking fabric).
This is a 100% wool, and wool has some pretty interesting qualities. One of them is that if you wet it and then allow it to dry, you can re-shape it. This is called blocking. The technique can be done in a variety of ways, but my preferred tools involve my steamer and/or a regular spray bottle and a big bulletin board. You just tack up the knit material, give it a dousing of water by one method or another, and let it dry:
Depending on the stitch you use and then thickness of the yarn, this might take several repeats, but it works wonders for flattening out a product.
This particular length of scarf is actually going to be turned into a cowl -- but I'll post pictures after it dries and I've put it all together.
Up next...cabling!!!!
