Yarn in exciting. Yarn is colorful. Yarn is warm and cozy. Making things out of yarn is like a small miracle - you have bunch of thread on hands and then slowly, stitch after stitch, row after row, something appears that makes people happy.
I like make people happy with my hand-knitted things. Whether it is warm wool socks, or rainbow-colored scarf. But the happiness is not only in the final product that people can use or ware. Knitting process by itself is therapeutic. I no longer dread long waits - because I have my knitting with me. I no longer get impatient during full of distractions long homework sessions with my son - I can just count the stitches and rows of a new sweater.
When I cannot go outside to touch my flowers, I pull out bins of yarn and look at their colors and touch them and it makes me feel better! Even my family members can and look at all these wonderful colors with me! Especially these days, there is so much yarn with different textures, new fibers, all possible shades and undertones... But it was not always like this - sometimes we had to knit what we had in the store, or weaved ourselves because often there was nothing at the store...
I started knitting maybe when I was 7 or 8 years old. I started typically with very tight stitches and my losing her patience with me. I wanted to please her and I finished my first swatch.
Then my mom decided to attend a knitting class just to diversify her life, which later on got in the way, and she sent me instead.
Again, to please my mom I went. By a complete accident, a friend of mine, a fellow 2nd grader, signed up for the same class and it became much more fun.
The "venue" was quite interesting as well.... Oh, I forgot to mention that I grew up in Soviet Russia. So, the building was a communal one, where people got together to watch movie on big screens, to attend dance classes and of course... propaganda meetings. So, the knitting venue was a room, in which such propaganda was prepared. It had a lot of red flags with golden letters. A lot of other memorabilia.... the room seems grandiose and by any means regular people were allowed to be in that room.
But they made an exception for the knitting class. the room was large, with long table in the middle. Because the room was so pretensions, the knitting class was assigned a supervisor to make sure people do not touch anything... We later figured out that this supervisor volunteered to keep an eye on things just to attend a free knitting instructions. How we figured it out? She asked the most questions and always had a lot of yarn with her :)
Then, during high school home economics class, we had an option to choose machine knitting. Bunch of girls chose that instead of elementary school teaching prep. It was the first year this class was introduced. And, as it often happened during Soviet times, our knitting machines were far from ready. Our teacher was of course frustrated but she started teaching us all kinds of advanced hand knitting techniques. She taught us how to count gauge, how to calculate and knit out sleeves, armholes, collar, etc.
I was hooked. My first sweater was for a doll. The yarn was uneven acrylic with swamp-green color. To this day, I dislike this color. But this was the only option. It won a first prize at the high school craft show. I made many more sweater, sock, scarves and vests since then. Variety of yarns slowly improved. Designs became more sophisticated.
The creative side of me no longer wants just to knit with what is available. I want to experiment with mixing yarns, with how two different textures fit together, how different patterns come out depending on a combination of knitting needles size, yarn and pattern...
This is what this blog is about. Let's mix and mismatch and, as a result, create together!!
Happy knitting, my fellow knitters!
Lena
I like make people happy with my hand-knitted things. Whether it is warm wool socks, or rainbow-colored scarf. But the happiness is not only in the final product that people can use or ware. Knitting process by itself is therapeutic. I no longer dread long waits - because I have my knitting with me. I no longer get impatient during full of distractions long homework sessions with my son - I can just count the stitches and rows of a new sweater.
When I cannot go outside to touch my flowers, I pull out bins of yarn and look at their colors and touch them and it makes me feel better! Even my family members can and look at all these wonderful colors with me! Especially these days, there is so much yarn with different textures, new fibers, all possible shades and undertones... But it was not always like this - sometimes we had to knit what we had in the store, or weaved ourselves because often there was nothing at the store...
I started knitting maybe when I was 7 or 8 years old. I started typically with very tight stitches and my losing her patience with me. I wanted to please her and I finished my first swatch.
Then my mom decided to attend a knitting class just to diversify her life, which later on got in the way, and she sent me instead.
Again, to please my mom I went. By a complete accident, a friend of mine, a fellow 2nd grader, signed up for the same class and it became much more fun.
The "venue" was quite interesting as well.... Oh, I forgot to mention that I grew up in Soviet Russia. So, the building was a communal one, where people got together to watch movie on big screens, to attend dance classes and of course... propaganda meetings. So, the knitting venue was a room, in which such propaganda was prepared. It had a lot of red flags with golden letters. A lot of other memorabilia.... the room seems grandiose and by any means regular people were allowed to be in that room.
But they made an exception for the knitting class. the room was large, with long table in the middle. Because the room was so pretensions, the knitting class was assigned a supervisor to make sure people do not touch anything... We later figured out that this supervisor volunteered to keep an eye on things just to attend a free knitting instructions. How we figured it out? She asked the most questions and always had a lot of yarn with her :)
Then, during high school home economics class, we had an option to choose machine knitting. Bunch of girls chose that instead of elementary school teaching prep. It was the first year this class was introduced. And, as it often happened during Soviet times, our knitting machines were far from ready. Our teacher was of course frustrated but she started teaching us all kinds of advanced hand knitting techniques. She taught us how to count gauge, how to calculate and knit out sleeves, armholes, collar, etc.
I was hooked. My first sweater was for a doll. The yarn was uneven acrylic with swamp-green color. To this day, I dislike this color. But this was the only option. It won a first prize at the high school craft show. I made many more sweater, sock, scarves and vests since then. Variety of yarns slowly improved. Designs became more sophisticated.
The creative side of me no longer wants just to knit with what is available. I want to experiment with mixing yarns, with how two different textures fit together, how different patterns come out depending on a combination of knitting needles size, yarn and pattern...
This is what this blog is about. Let's mix and mismatch and, as a result, create together!!
Happy knitting, my fellow knitters!
Lena
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