Friday, March 10, 2006

Learning to Knit

There are so many new knitters these days - when and where did you learn to knit?

I learned to knit because my mother sent me to knitting lessons. I don't know why she did this. She wasn't much of a knitter herself, and judging from her years of comments about knitting in general, I don't think it's a skill she highly values. But this was in the mid-sixties before women's lib, so maybe it was one of those homemaking skills my mother thought I should know.

Anyway, once a week a friend and I would ride our bikes to the local yarn shop for our lessons. We split a ball of yarn, my friend picked the color which I'm sure was called "Barf Brown". The lady at the yarn shop was a bit fierce, so let's just say I didn't find knitting relaxing. But after several weeks of this I managed to produce a strange sixties-style Barf-Brown garter stitch headband. Oddly enough, I kept knitting. I remember knitting a really long and horrible red, white and blue acrylic ribbed scarf for my brother - he actually wore it - and an assortment of hats and some doll clothes.

So since I'm now fifty, I've been knitting most of my life - and I have the stash to prove it. In a few more posts I'm going to have to show you just how old stash yarn can be.

1 comment:

Yvonne said...

I learned to knit a long time ago, and I don't remember how. I then lost it, because nobody else I knew could knit and I didn't have anywhere to go to ask questions and get answers or help. Recently (like about a year ago) I bought a book for 9-12 year olds, I figured I would be able to handle that. And that is all it took!

thanks for visiting my blog, Holly!!