Knitting and me

Hello, and welcome to my blog!

My relation with yarn and needles started many years ago, when I was just a little girl, not even at a school age yet. Knitting and crafting in general is something that flows within the veins of women in my family, and it was first taught to me by my grandmother. She showed me a few basic stitches and once I got hold of that, taught me a motif, that I used to create a dress for my doll. That was my first project, made out of a mohair type yarn (I am guessing my love for mohair starts from there, too.... ), totally imperfect, but wearable doll dress. I wish I still had it though to show to my daughter, when she grows.

During the school years, I learned all the basics of knitting and crocheting. We were creating a lot of things starting from pot-holders, to gloves, socks, sweaters, scarves and many other. I have to admit I have never knit a single sock in my life - at the time of my school project I successfully managed to escape the whole thing with my mother helping me out and knitting at least one sock to show the teacher.... I think she turned the blind eye on that, since I was doing all the other stuff and usually even more than was on the program. It might be the "second sock syndrome" that scares me? Or maybe just the fact that I used to think of socks as a necessity and not something beautiful that someone would actually choose to wear.... as most our socks back then were done by grandma in simple wool, simple stitch, warm and scratchy. I've changed my mind on them since then, but there are still a few things that keep me from knitting them: a) my grandma still knits socks; b) I live in Greece now, and even winters are warm here. So I don't get to wear them that much anyway.

But enough about socks. As time passed, I learned that you can never know everything about knitting. Or crochet. There are always new patterns, stitches, techniques, designs... so now matter how good one is at it, there is still more to learn, new things to try.

During past year, I have become addicted to shawl knitting and it's been mainly about lace. I don't know if I'll ever get tired of it, the "lace bug" has bitten me pretty hard. I love improvising and creating designs as I knit them, a few have become popular among other knitters, so I am thinking about releasing them in patterns. The first one is being test-knit and will be out in no time, as my test knitter is nearly done with it. It is a fairly simple knit, but I had to test it anyway.... just to make sure, it is well understood and has no mistakes. ;)