i knit

I just finished my semi-annual thesis committee meeting, which requires a fairly generous commitment of preparation time. In light of this and a few other out of the ordinary things occurring in life, I haven't felt justified in "wasting" my time with hobbies, the most frequent one in which I indulge being knitting. I can't say that it really is wasting of time, because knitting is a great stress reliever most of the time (it can also CREATE stress, depending on which project it is). Anyhow, it's over now, so I can get back to knitting ferociously, at least sometimes.

The story of why/how I began knitting...

I am tall - six feet tall. Every part of me is tall/long. Long legs, long torso, long arms. This makes purchasing clothing a bit difficult. Sure there are specialty store for tall women like me, but I don't happen to make enough money to shop there, nor do I really like the clothing they carry. And so, one late-autumn day in 2003 I sat thinking about warm, cuddly sweaters and realized that I could get them to fit me if I made them myself. That would require knowing how to knit. So I set off to learn. I went to the local Michaels' store and picked up a "teach yourself how to knit" kit and a skein of yarn that I envisioned becoming a wonderfully snuggly pair of socks. I then set to work following pictures and words from the book in the kit to work the yarn around needles and make it look like something I'd seen before in a sweater.

Learning the knit stitch was simple. For some reason the purl stitch confused me for many a day, and I opted out of my roommate's birthday outing to sit at home and figure out how to purl. Lame-O! I finally figured it out, then read about the continental style of knitting and learned that instead since it's supposed to be faster than the English method I had originally learned. With knit and purl under my belt, I created my first "project." I was supposed to make a swatch of stockinette stitch (knit one row, purl one row, repeat), but I was getting bored at about the 5th row, so I formed a penguin into the stitches by using the opposite stitch prescribed for the row. Why a penguin? I don't know. It was cute, and there was a picture of it in the book I was learning from. ???

I still have that penguin-thing, because somewhere along the line somebody told me to save the first thing I knit to look back on it and recall my humble beginnings. It was quite a while after I knit the penguin-thing that I heard this advice, but fortunately I rarely throw away things that could have some sort of use. Not that the penguin-thing had much of a use. I tried using it as a coaster for a while, because that was all it was good for.

I'll have to find it and a digital camera and get a picture put up. It's...pretty ugly.

That's how it all started!