{"id":530,"date":"2009-10-18T12:13:50","date_gmt":"2009-10-18T16:13:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/noelfigart.com\/blog\/?p=530"},"modified":"2009-10-18T12:13:50","modified_gmt":"2009-10-18T16:13:50","slug":"knitting-around","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/2009\/10\/18\/knitting-around\/","title":{"rendered":"Knitting Around"},"content":{"rendered":"

I suppose anyone who reads this blog has ascertained that I’m a pretty enthusiastic knitter.<\/p>\n

I didn’t get into knitting until about 2005 or so. \u00a0I was going through an insane amount of stress, I had some friends who knitted and it looked cool and I like having something to do with my hands while watching a movie and things like that. \u00a0I made some scarves and a hat or two, and it was fun, but I didn’t really groove on knitting until I\u00a0learned to knit in the round making toe-up socks with short row heels<\/a>. \u00a0In fact, I don’t know how to make a traditional heel to this day. \u00a0My favorite socks are the ones I knit myself. \u00a0They’re warmer than the cotton jobs you buy in department stores, being wool and all. \u00a0 The hand-washing, though, is a bit of a pain.<\/p>\n

I made a sweater after I’d been knitting about six months. \u00a0A friend kindly sent me The Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns <\/a>after a complaint about the fact that I knew how to use a sloper in sewing<\/em>, so why didn’t knitting<\/em> have something like that? \u00a0I don’t much like trying to create to a specific pattern, you see. \u00a0But there are garment templates to work and create from. \u00a0I learned a lot from this book, still use it for making mittens and hat and think it’s a good book for any knitter who likes to create her own work, but needs a good canvas to start from.<\/p>\n

That sweater I made? \u00a0It proved three things: \u00a0The Sweater Curse<\/a> is real, \u00a0I hate sewing up a sweater, and I prefer knitting in the round to knitting flat when it comes to garments. \u00a0It wasn’t a very good sweater, mind. \u00a0I did my best, but I wasn’t skilled enough yet.<\/p>\n

Some time later, I got a copy of Knitting Without Tears<\/a>. \u00a0Now, I’d always wanted to be able to knit sweaters and had a feeling that if I just didn’t have to seam the darned things, I’d have something nice that I’d be content to wear or to give to someone else. \u00a0I live in Northern New England. \u00a0You’d be hard put to find a more practical application of knitting than making sweaters. It’s no wonder that some of the most gorgeous and inventive garments in the knitting tradition are local to Northern Europe. \u00a0 Once I’d learned stranded knitting using a two fisted technique (yes, I can knit with my right or left hand — useful when you’re carrying two colors of yarn), you bet I was going to start knitting sweaters in the Nordic and Icelandic traditions.<\/p>\n

It is the inherent practicality of it that I love, though. \u00a0Knitting is like banked time. \u00a0Think of how much waiting we do in our lives — waiting in line at the bank, waiting at the airport, riding in the car to get somewhere, waiting at the doctor’s office. \u00a0You’d be amazed how many of the socks I wear are knitted on airplanes or trains. \u00a0There are socks \u00a0I have that remind me of trips I’ve taken because they were created while travelling. \u00a0When you knit, that time becomes productive time. \u00a0At the end of it, you have a real sweater you can wear for years, or socks that keep your feet toasty warm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I suppose anyone who reads this blog has ascertained that I’m a pretty enthusiastic knitter. I didn’t get into knitting until about 2005 or so. \u00a0I was going through an insane amount of stress, I had some friends who knitted and it looked cool and I like having something to do with my hands while … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Knitting Around”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-knitting"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=530"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}