Friday, April 7th, 2006
The boys club has a new member.
‘Cisco’s first knitting in Galway worsted weight wool on No. 8 bamboo needles from Daiso.
My sample in yellow Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran scraps.
A couple days ago, I taught my friend, Francisco, how to knit. It was just last week when he was over at our house and expressed some interest in learning to knit (girls, this one’s a keeper). Well, not even the teeny tiniest amount of interest in knitting goes unnoticed around here. Over the past year and a half, I’ve taught half a dozen people to knit. I’m remarkably sentimental about the whole thing. In fact, I don’t know if Richard knows, but I saved his first few rows of knitting as well. It’s like your first handspun. Precious. A single moment in time, captured in a few stitches.
So here’s the thing. I’m an awkward teacher. Since I pretty much learned from pictures in a book, I never had the experience of someone else showing me step-by-step what to do. So when I teach someone to knit, I start with the long-tail cast on, then move to the knit stitch, and eventually to purl stitches and casting off… ’cause that’s how it’s described in books.
And here’s where it all kind of goes downhill — how about tensioning? needle/hand position? Tensioning is crucial to beautiful fabric (and relaxed knitting)… so when Michelle says she’s frustrated that she tends to knit tightly, I kind of blame myself. And holding your right hand under (like a pencil) or over the right needle? There are so many different ways to knit that, in a way, I figure the most comfortable method will eventually come to you. If you are interested (or obsessive like me) you might check out some books that will show you the English, Scottish, French, German, or Combined (Eastern Uncrossed) styles of holding your needles and yarn. But in the end isn’t the goal getting the stitch formed on the needle in the method that is most comfortable for you?
Do any of you teach knitting? Casually for friends or “officially”? How do you do it? Do you start with the cast on? Or do you cast on for the student and then just start with the knit stitch? What kind of cast on do you start with? Long-tail? Backward loop? Knitted on?
Being the control freak that I am, I tend to want to watch them make each and every stitch — either congratulating them on nice looking stitches or attempting to dive in and fix problems. Luckily, ‘Cisco is an engineer and knitting is not rocket science. He was able to spot and fix most of his own issues. Irene, my spinning teacher, does this thing where she walks away from you so that you don’t think she’s looking over your shoulder… but really she is observing from a distance. That way, she allows you to relax into it. I can’t do that. I hover. Maybe my friends are just too polite to tell me to shut up and go away for a bit.
Speaking of boys and their knitting, Richard is all inspired to start knitting socks again. This time, he requested fat yarn in “Slayer” so that he could actually see some progress. Here’s his progress:
Richard’s Slayer Socks in Speed Demon Sock Yarn
I, too, have sock progress. Here’s one finished Pomatomus sock knit with my hand-dyed superwash sock yarn in “Libertine”:
Dude, you know how difficult it is to take a photo of your own foot?
Modified toe for me, me, me.
Siew and I were both working on our Pomatomus socks at Rachael and Lala’s drink-up on Monday night and I realized that I had mis-read the pattern… so my “version” of Pomatomus has only two repeats in the leg and not three. I also changed the toe shaping because I like my standard round-ish toes: decrease row, 3 rows plain, [decrease row, 2 rows plain] x 2, [decrease row, 1 row plain] x 3, decrease every row until there are 16 stitches in total (or 8 on each half of the magic loop) and then graft together (or be lazy and do a three-needle cast off). Super easy to remember. See? Not rocket science.
the power of knitting is fierce.” And we all know that with great power comes great responsibility…
