Starting Out...

It's Knitting and Crochet blog week. As I'm usually a day late and a dollar short on these kinds of things, I just found out. (Thanks nutmegknitter!) I have, however, at the last minute decided to participate to the best of my abilities. This means the recycling your sweaters post will be delayed, but that's ok by me.

Starting Out

It's really hard to say exactly how I started out. I was young, under 10 I'd guess, and I know about the things I made in those days, but the exact timeline is a bit fuzzy. I learned both knitting and crocheting around the same time with lessons from both my grandmother and my mother combined. My gram was a big knitter. She was never not knitting. It's one of the main things I remember about her. When she came to visit we would take her to K-mart to buy yarn. No, I'm not crazy, K-mart used to sell yarn. Red heart to be exact.

Gram made alot of those crazy 80s sweaters in acrylic. I distinctly remember one with a zebra she made for my aunt who had to be about 17 at the time. Once when Gram visited she tried to teach me. My first knitting was the classic garter stitch wonky width scarf with lots of holes. It was purple. When Gram wasn't visiting in the house Mom would help. I didn't really ever finish things back then.

Gram never crocheted as far as I knew, that I learned from my mom. Crocheted things I did finish. It was all thread crocheted things that we used to starch. My mom made a big hat that still hangs on the wall in her house, and I made a mini one that we put on the christmas tree every year. My sister made a pink candy cane. It also goes on the tree. I think that mini hat was my first FO, but I could be wrong.

I am pretty sure about my first knitted "FO". It was a sweater for my American Girl doll, Molly. I knit it during whatever winter olympics were happening back then, I remember watching the olympics and that we lived in our new house, which means I was 13 and it was 1992. That seems a bit old for dolls now. Maybe I was younger, but back then olympics only happened every four years, and we didn't live in that house until I was 10. Anyways, it was a pink sweater, with a cable down the front. I mostly finished it, abandoned it, and my mom finished it later. You can see the big gauge change where that happened. Mom knits looser than I do. Molly and the sweater are still safe and sound at my folks house waiting patiently for me to stop roaming the world, settle down and have a daughter of my own. Good thing too, from what I understand those American Girls cost a pretty penny these days!

Then I didn't knit or crochet for a long time, well I guess it wasn't that long. I picked it up again when I was in college, some friend were crocheting blankets and I re-taught myself (with some help from mom) to knit one winter break. 1998/99 to be precise. I made a scarf for my new boyfriend (now my husband) that he still wears today. I also made a cray striped scarf for my sister to recreate one she was in love with at the GAP, similar to my aunt and the zebra sweater, she was 17 and just had to have it. I kept the leftovers from that scarf, moved them everywhere with me and made a blanket for her son when he was born three years ago.

There you go. The beginnings of all this. 20+ years in the making. (Yikes!).

Even though I forgot and relearned how to knit many times over the years, I believe that somewhere ingrained in my subconscious are those early lessons with Gram or possibly even my great grandmother. You see, I'm a continental eastern uncrossed knitter. My mother is not, neither is my sister.

Both are english standard knitters. I always knit "backwards". If I look closely at Molly's sweater, not only is there a gauge change, but a single row of twisted stitches between my knitting and my mother's. Grams heritage was from Hungary, so I can only assume (or at least I like to keep the romantic notion) that I picked this habit up from her.