OT: Anyone Knit?

Michelle, One of the most comprehensive books on knitting is Mary Thomas's Knitting Book. You can get it from Dover Books. My guess without trying it on the needles is that you are getting a crossed knitting stitch. There are different schools of knitting, mainly divided into the English and Continental styles. These are explained very well in the Thomas book with clear illustrations. (I love that book. Can you tell?) Some people will tell you one or the other is just wrong. If it works for you and you like it, go for it. The only caution may be that it will change the appearance of fancy stitches if you use a non-standard method of knitting. Once you get into cables and the like, if you are knitting differently that the pattern expects you to be knitting, the results may differ from the standard. I find smaller or at least medium-sized needles easier to use than the bigger needles. Now, 000 needles get a bit challenging. I knitted one beaded purse on them. I've meant to go back and do more but..... Have fun with your knitting. It sounds as if you are picking it up quickly.

Marilyn in MN

Well, when you want it, it's rec.crafts.textiles.yarn. :)

As long as you don't add a twist to the loop, it doesn't matter which way it rode the needle. I had to "air knit" to see what you meant, and realized I use counterclockwise for yarn held in my right hand and clockwise for yarn held in my left. When I hand-knit fair-isle patterns, I put the main color on my right hand, the accent color on the left so that I don't have to drop the yarn, pick it up, drop, pick, etc. It makes no difference to the end result. Are you left-handed, by chance?

Thanks Marilyn,

I looked at the crossed knitting stitch, but its not that, it looks just like regular knitting. I must be backwards.......... I am amazed at how long it takes to make something. For some reason I thought it would be faster than crochet (not so great at that either lol!)

Michelle Giordano

I taught myself to knit years ago, from a thin booklet put out by Coats & Clark. I think it was the English method. A few years later a friend from Iceland taught me the Continental method which I found much easier and quicker. The speed does come with practice; she could knit two dresses in a weekend, of baby yarn: one for herself (size 14) and one for her 11yo daughter!

Jean M.

Left handed.......well, not exactly........I am just weird. I can do almost everything with both hands, except write. Is it possible to be a little bit left handed?

There was no twist to the loop, and I found clockwise to be quicker, easier and makes it look nice and even. when I did it the right way my stitches were an ugly mess.

Thanks!

Michelle Giordano

I think I'm a little faster with the yarn in my left hand, and I am right-handed. It has something to do with it being a shorter reach to pick up the yarn.

I knit left handed because I copied my mother, who was left handed. I never saw the necessity to change.

However, I carry my handbag on my left shoulder because that was how you had to carry it in the air force - leaving the right hand free to salute!!!

Being some left-handed and some right-handed called mixed dominance or ambidexterity. If you can truly do everything equally well with both hands, you are bidextrous, not ambidextrous.

I can do just about everything with either hand except play tennis or badminton -- for some unfathomable reason, I am programmed to do one one-handed and the other the other-handed. I can't tell you which is which because I haven't tried either for years, but when I use the wrong hand because I forget which hand I usually use, my hands remember and I end up serving the racket over the net, not the ball/birdie. Very embarassing.... But I can eat either-handed, I can use chopsticks either-handed, I have always written on paper with my left hand and on blackboards with my right hand (sometimes switching off if there wasn't enough room), and I sign (as in American Sign Language) partly left-handed and partly right-handed, which drives people insane.

I suspect that the books were trying to teach you western knitting and you unvented eastern knitting.

The names were given, originally, because western was popular in western Europe and eastern was popular in eastern Europe -- or something of the sort. I prefer to say that when you sit facing north, the fronts of your western stitches face west, and the fronts of your eastern stitches face east.

That is, western stitches face west if you knit off the left needle onto the right needle, which is the more-common method. If you knit off the right needle onto the left needle, you have to sit facing south to make it work.

I think we ought to call these two directions "northern" and "southern" to correspond to "eastern" and "western", but we have no names for them at all -- though off the right onto the left is called by many clumsy, inapt names: "wrong way knitting", "mirror knitting", "left-handed knitting", and "knitting back backwards" are all I can recall off hand.

Quite a lot of people have learned to knit in both directions so that they can knit flat without having to turn the work over. I never learned to purl southern style, but I can manage to knit off the right needle onto the left well enough to manage bobbles and the pointed garter-stitch edging from Medrith Glover's peacock. Which I have to re-design[1] into purling on the front rows to get around my inability to purl on the back rows.

As has been previously mentioned, Mary Thomas's two-volume set (_M.T.'s Knitting Book_ and _M.T.'s Book of Knitting Patterns_) is the work to take to a desert island if you've only room for one knitting reference in your trunk.

Anything by Elizabeth Zimmermann is good, and her _Knitting Without Tears_ is required reading.

Once you think you can knit a whole sweater, you need to read Barbara Walker's _Knitting from the Top_, to see how easy it is to design sweaters that fit perfectly. She has also written three stitch treasuries -- all four books are have been reprinted by Schoolhouse Press. (And, of course, Schoolhouse keeps all of E.Z.'s works in print.)

Vurra strange: even if you throw in all my embroidery books and a box of iced-tea spoons, my sewing books take up less of my needlework shelf than my knitting books do -- and *not one* of the sewing books is a must-read, while nearly all of my knitting books are books I could recommend with enthusiasm.

Is it just that Mommy taught me how to sew long before I started collecting books, or is sewing so complex that no one book can be definitive?

Joy Beeson

Michelle: Couldn't get to the boards, as my server was down for a couple of days. Anyway, my advice is to go to your local public library and look at ALL of the knitting books they have, old and new, and see which ones "talk" to you. Don't forget the children's dept., sometimes kids how-to books are better for beginners as they tend to use simpler language and clearer illustrations. One "grown-up" book I often recommend is "Knitting in Plain English" by Maggie Righetti. Borrow all the books that look likely to you, and bring them home to peruse at your leisure.

About crochet. Crochet is generally much faster than knitting, and uses about one-third more yarn for a given area of fabric. It is also much more firm and crisp, and less drapable. Thus I knit sweaters, afghans, watch caps, scarves, mittens and ALL baby items, but I crochet lace edgings for table and bed linens, doilies and soft trivets for protecting my dining table, and occasionally something like a vest which is meant to stand away from the body rather than hugging it.

Remember, the technique you use is not particularly important as long as it works for you. There are many different styles of knitting all over the world. What IS important is the finished piece.

Olwyn Mary in New Orleans.

Hi Michelle,

Although it is MANY years since I last tried knitting, I too found it slow going. I prefer crochet - putting rows of trebles & double trebles in seems to make the work go faster!

However, sewing with a machine is even faster ;)

Sarah

There are wonderful kniting machines available, too. An entire row with one push of the carriage, and that row can be two-color, tuck stitch, slip stitch, or even lace. You've got to love a machine that can do that!

So is knitting with a machine. :)

I have a cousin who hand knits at what feels like the speed of light! As a 13 YO she knitted in the car, on long journeys... Once, when her family took the two-day trip from Thurso (north coast of Scotland, close to John O'Groats) to a camping place at Tintagel (not far from Lands End!), she knitted and sewed up a lace cardigan, casting on as they left home, and was wearing it when they went out for dinner after setting up camp!

She knitted the most beautiful baby shawls for James and his cousins when they were born.

Her dad and brothers weilded the knitting machine, keeping all for boys and Liz in school jerseys! Her mum sewed and knitted fancy stuff, as did Liz. My aunt once mended Napoleon's britches! She worked for the Royal School of Needlework, in their Edinbrough branch (which may no longer exist).

All that happens when I knit is that I make lots of holes and tie my thumbs together.

There's nothing like a nice little knitting machine. Zzzzzip! and one row is all done.

I had one. I enjoyed it so much I sold it and bought an exercise bike!

In article , Viviane of BigPond Internet Services uttered

I'm right-handed - but can do many things, including writing on a white board (confuses the cr@p outta students) with either hand. What I have worked out is that the things I do left-handed, I was taught to do by my Dad, who had the tendency walloped out of him at school, as they did in the 1920s. This includes knitting. At 4, I could knit away happily left-handed. At 5, Mum tried to get me to do it the "right" way round ... and I was 20 before I could do it again., and I'm still slow.

Knitting machines are great - esp when you've been zit-zotting away for hours and suddenly, for no reason you can fathom, it all drops off and lands on your foot. Weights and all. Even better when it's a 14-gauge industrial you're bickering with.