Ten Things

Grumperina started this one and I've seen it floating about -

Ten Knitterly Things You Didn't Know About Me (Maybe):

1. Mom and I argue about who taught me to knit - I say she did and she says I learned it on my own by reading her books. I was about 10 or 11 at the time. No argument about who taught me to sew (Mom) and crochet (Dad).

2. I re-learned knitting by looking up everything on the internet.

3. I knit Western style but use Continental if it's really repetitive (endless garter stitch anyone?) or I'm in a real hurry (ummm, right before Christmas).

4. I rarely knit exactly to the pattern (Ok, that one may not be a surprise to those who've read my blog for a while). This sometimes leads to interesting results.

5. I love to try traditional techniques, materials and patterns. One of these days I'm going to knit my own underwear using this pattern. (Whether I actually wear them is another matter)

6. I don't use both hands to throw the yarn when knitting Fair Isle - it's all done with the right hand and I drop the color I'm not using. It sounds slow, but it really isn't. With Fair Isle, I also knot my color joins and cut them about 1/4-1/2 inch long after I'm all through - no weaving in of ends for me. (I wouldn't try this with anything but Shetland yarn, though.)

7. Sock knitting is the ultimate portable knitting for me - I try to always have a pair on the needles. I've done this technique before in blankets and washcloths but here's a good explanation of double knitting socks (knitting one sock inside the other at the same time) that I'm thinking of trying.

8. I get very testy if anyone interrupts the knitting - I'd like to apologize to my husband right now. I'm particularly bad if it's lace or something that requires a lot of counting.

9. I'm ok with starting knitting a new design with only the vaguest ideas of how I'm going to finish it. That's part of the fun, after all. You have to be willing to frog if it doesn't work out.

10. And one more thing-
When I was quilting, I made lots of quilts for family and friends and even more for charity and never made one for me. When I started knitting, I decided that I deserved some stuff, too.

Completed items (since 2003) 65
Items for others 53
Items for me 12