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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Interesting times

I had a comment this week: "I didn't realise you were Scissor Sistas, I thought they were a professional company". On the face of it, I knew what my friend meant - "wow, you're Scissor Sistas" but it could also be taken as an insult - "I didn't think you could make stuff that good".

Hmm, the dilemma of crafting then raises it's ugly head. Hand made crafts don't always look like 'shop bought' items. Some aren't finished with great care but the majority have beautiful touches and are one of a kind. And with that comes a price tag that a lot of people think isn't worth paying.

My husband suggested I made some cushion covers to sell - there are too many beautifully made ones already so I won't be trying to compete but I compared the cost of hand made with shop bought. Not a great difference in price between a large department store price and a lot I have seen on Etsy, for example, but no comparison between the options & workmanship available between the two.

Economies of scale and a staff of hundreds (or more) are not within our grasp but we still need to make a living.

Unless a talented crafter themselves, our customers need to consider our time & effort as being worth a few extra pounds on what they would pay from a department store. While I was a student, my then-boyfriend-now-husband and I used to spend our food money on art. Not art that cost us thousands, or even hundreds, but art by local artists that we liked & would enjoy. Craft items are the same to me - you buy them because you love the item and want to use it/look at it and this in turn rewards the maker so they can make something else (or buy food).

So go and support your craft fairs, spend your money on something that no-one else will have. And feel smug about it!

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