My Creative Need - Part 4 Knitting

I would love to say that I am a knitter, but in truth I am only a dabbler. I knit, but when you look closely (sometimes not even that close) you will see the miriad of errors. I started knitting about 5 years ago when Sweetheart was a baby. My cousins were all sporting babies with handmade garments, but alas my child was bereft. My mother has a jumper for my brother which she started and has not finished. He is now 30. My mother-in-law says she can only make socks. In men´s sizes. So I decided that I will learn to knit and do it for myself.

I brought a book which had the instructions at the bottom which you can look at while reading the pattern above. The first thing I knitted was an Intarsia pattern which I actually did well with only a few mistakes. I learnt, though, that when you change the suggested wool you can actually change the desired results. Mine I knitted in this lovely Alpaca wool (as here in Austria I am yet to find nice 100% wool other than this Alpaca wool which was on sale as no-one wanted to buy it. I brought up the whole stock in 4 different colours), but it was a bit thicker than the suggested wool which meant that we were unable to put it over anyone´s head. I keep it for memories. The next jumper I made for Sweetheart which actually turned out well, but she refused to wear it. From here came numerous hats, scarfs, and a couple of jumpers for me.

Knitting was wonderful as it gave me something to do while watching my children. They could play by themselves but needed 100% observation (my children are the types that try everything and find every form of danger). From knitting sourged my creative desires and fullfill these needs. Knitting was the panacea to the gaping hole that had been growing since I started travelling and wasn´t able to do much creatively. Knitting became my outlet. And my addiction.

I always have a knitting project on the go. Knitting now has been relegated to a night time activity as my life is fuller now than 5 years ago and I have other things to do during the day. Nightime (when not studying) means sitting and watching a DVD, a bottle of wine (a good Hardys at the moment) and a packet of chips. Things start out OK, but as my sobriety slips, so do my knitting standards. I have never been able to knit things with a complicated patterns, such as a lace, as my attention is constantly distracted with small children. My project for the past year are blankets for the girls I saw in a magazine. A patchwork of small squares with little hearts in the middle. Easy to knit. Standard pattern. Just don´t look closely as there is a multitude of mistakes (like my typing I guess). Advice for careless knitters like myself: knit in chunky wool as it is harder to see the mistakes.