A Journey In The Art of Knitting

I thought I would post about something a little different today from my normal work I hope you enjoy, maybe give you a chuckle comments always welcome but be gentle specially if you are an accomplished knitter – of which you will find out I am not lol.

The trials and tribulations of a novice knitter…

Up until about four months ago I hadn’t picked up a set of knitting needles for ooh at least 20 years. Back then I had got to the point where I could knit a jumper – badly, yep it certainly wasn’t perfect the arms were skew whiff one a bit longer than the other , body was somewhere three times bigger than when I started and the neckline? – well lets say good job I haven’t got a massive head! and if i said it was slightly religious on account of the holiness you can imagine what it looked like :)( I blame it all on the knitting fairies who sneak in extra stitches and pinch ones when your back is turned) none the less created in bright turquoise mohair it became very handy for added warmth when taking long walks on a blustery beach here on the east coast -and fortunately I had a coat that kept my knitting disaster from the world to see and my secret until now was never known.
Most of my creativity as some of you may know is generally in the form of paintings and drawings but when I’m not in the studio I like to do something creatively different, ” a change is as good as a rest” as the old saying goes. So in October I treated myself to some 8mm knitting needles and a couple of balls of cream wool and revisited the knitting experience.

20 years of the old gray matter being filled with other forms of paraphernalia rendered what I had learned all those years ago to the dim and distant areas of the back of my mind and whilst you may never forget how to ride a bike knitting I found was another thing! So without further ado I went on line in an attempt to jog the old brain cells to the basics of knitting like casting on (always a good start) and began… with a scarf then another scarf so far so good! Christmas came and bless me ole dad had gifted me some more wool ( more cream wool) so I carried on with the start of another scarf! The only thing was in my mind as I clickity clicked was how many cream scarves can a girl have? I mean its all very well but at some point you have to consider that maybe one should have a go at something else so about 30 rows in I decided that this creation was going to morph itself into a bag instead! In the back of my mind a little voice said yeah good luck with that Rachelle, as it then dawned on me to create a bag I would need to learn how to make a strap and probably line it too as any weight within the bag would probably or should I say definitely stretch it to my feet eventually and anything that resembled a pen or pencil is highly unlikely to stay there (no not cos of stitches dropped which I managed to avoid this time, just the size of the needles used in this project ) .

So back onto Google I go for information how to make a strap and found out I was going to need double pointed needles eh what? Not only that .. I was going to require 4 of them!!!!!!! Hang on a minute I’ve only just got to mastering two and now you want me to use four ? all in one go???? To be honest with you at this point I thought maybe i’ll just plait some wool or just use a bit of i cord. But not to beaten I toddled off to Hunmanbys village charity shop in search of some double pointed needles,(which turned out to be a challenge in itself because they didn’t actually have four exact matching ones so I came home with a bundle of 10 needles sorted four out that were the same thickness but two different lengths!) anyway I digress. Back to Google I found a video where a lady called “Judy” demonstrated how to use these 4 double pointed needles and eventually after many plays of the video and many times unraveling to start again and thus hearing many times ” its easy!” (yeah sure Judy i believe you) I eventually had what began to look like the tube-like creation required to make the strap! (Although if you follow Judy’s instructions you will be casting 12 stitches on and I soon realised I only require 3 stitches for my project so unraveling ensued again !) Hey Ho! So on I go and the strap was created and I can tell you it wasn’t the easiest thing to do apart from nearly taking my eye out I also found out what fiddly slippery little suckers those 4 needles were which meant there were a few mishaps that I refused to unravel specially as I was at a point when I’d knitted 62 cms already out of the 120 I had to do! I decided that perfection wasn’t the name of the game at this point (well wouldn’t you?) and besides with the weight of the bag it would stretch any imperfections out (hopefully) lol.

So finally putting the whole thing together…. unfortunately when I was at the charity shop earlier mentioned I didn’t think to ask if they had a yarn needle! doh! contemplating another walk up there I spotted a piece of thin copper piping and the light bulb went on in my head that really all I needed for now was an instrument with an eye hole big enough to take the wool through to sew the edges of the bag up and attach newly made strap… so I went about the copper like a knitting woman possessed an ta da un instrument evolved (with a bit of burr removing with an emery board for good measure and obviously no rough edges to damage the wool 😉 )
Sewing commenceth…. added a button and ta da (again) said Rachelle Antoinette knitted bag project was done !

Ok its not perfect (and I won t be giving up my day job and besides I love painting too much!) it does still need lining ,its not an A++++++ however… it is my first attempt, it is a bag (the goal) and because I can I’m going to give myself a B- for attempt and innovation and even Persian rug makers leave a flaw in their creations don’t they? lol 🙂 It has to be said I do find the whole knitting process quite cathartic and whilst i’m a long way off creating a spectacular piece of clothing I wont be giving up , I just think my next few projects will be the odd cushion cover and the practicing of the fundamental basics of different stitches ( I hear there is a raspberry one?) and besides I’ve still got three more balls of cream wool to use …… scarf anyone?