5 Things I Love About Knitting

Knitting runs in my family. It's a skill that has been passed down from generation to generation. My Grandma taught me to knit. She started me off with big needles and some thick petrol blue yarn. I 'knitted' two large rectangles over a period of weeks which she sewed together to make into a tabard. I wore it with pride. Note that 'knitted' is in inverted commas. That's because I now realise that what I actually did was grapple and fight with some yarn and needles, it wasn't what I now know as knitting. I pulled the yarn too tight, fought to get the needle into the stitches, had more or less stitches at the end of each row than I started with. But Grandma patiently and skilfully unpicked rows, picked up stitches and 'fixed' my mistakes. More importantly she gave me the encouragement to continue. And continue I did.

If you haven't given it a whirl, then you really should. There are lots of knitting groups around these days with expert knitters happy to pass on their skill - Google 'Knit and Natter' and see what you find.

Here are some of the reasons I love to knit:

1. It's therapeutic. Getting into the rhythm and hearing the clickety clack of needles is actually quite relaxing. It's good for your brain too apparently - Albert Einstein allegedly knitted between projects to relax and calm his brain. If it was good enough for Albert.....

2. I'm not bilingual. Foreign languages are gobbledygook to me, I just can't learn them. You either can or you can't.....and I can't. However, I can read, speak and understand knitting fluently. It really is like another language - psso, c4b, sl1p, k2tog, yfwd etc etc then throw in parentheses, brackets, asterisks, double asterisks - if you can't read a pattern, then you are basically screwed.

3. Knitting is totally portable. I also work with leather, but can only do it when I'm in my work room as the numerous tools and materials are too big/heavy/impractical to carry around. But stick your needles and ball of yarn in your bag and you can knit 'on the move'. What a pity they won't allow needles on aircraft as it would be the ideal way to pass the time on a long haul flight.

4. With a simple ball of yarn and a couple of needles you can make fabric - brilliant! And combine that same single ball yarn with different stitch combos and voila, you can create texture, patterns, bobbles and twisted cables. Work with multiple balls in different colours and you can let your imagination go wild and make intricate designs, pictures, words - the possibilities are endless! Change to circular needles and you can make seamless 3D fabrics - wow!

5. Knit a gift for someone and they'll keep it. My friends daughter is in her second year at Uni. When she was born I knitted a matinee jacket and bonnet. It took ages as there were hundreds of stitches and each row was in moss stitch. My friend loved it. And she still has it. Highly unlikely she kept the mass produced outfits from Mothercare that she was also given. It's easy to go and buy a present, but making something takes time and shows how much you love the person you're giving it to.

Case in point - here's a pic of my dad from the 1960's wearing a cardigan featuring Canada geese, lovingly knitted for him by mum. It took her ages! He wore it, kept it (even after they divorced) and when he died my sister took it. She still has it. I wonder if Mum ever imagined it would still be around 50 years on?

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5 things I like about leather

1. The smell. Everyone loves the smell of leather, right? And it's a smell that lingers, it doesn't really fade. Walk into the room where I store numerous hides (half a decent sized herd at the last count) and the smell hits you - boom! And I love it.

2. The perfect imperfections. No two hides are the same - obviously. This isn't a man made material, so every piece of leather is different. I love to see the natural scars and veining on a side of leather. The ragged edges. I study each hide I buy and it tells me what style of bag to make.

3. The substance. A piece of leather is not like a piece of fabric. It is thicker in places. Softer in others. That's why bag making is an art - it's knowing that parts of the hide should be used for straps, but never for gussets and vice versa.

4. It's green. Not the colour green, I mean it's environmentally friendly. Contravertial maybe, but no-one ever bred a cow for it's hide. Leather is a by-product of the meat industry (or fishing industry if working with salmon or carp leather - yes, really!) so using it is actually a form of recycling.

5. Its' versatility. Give me a piece of leather and I'll show you the bag, the journal, the belt, the phone case, the dog collar, the cuff, the manuscript cover etc etc. A good tannery offers a wide range of hides and with skill, the right tools, some creative flair and a bit of knowledge you can make all sorts of amazing things!

See our work in our Etsy shop - ScissorSistas.etsy.com