Monday 16 July 2007

A conversion to Knitology

On Sunday I had a brilliant idea. I bought cheap (or should I say inexpensive) knitting needles at Wal-Mart for my two youngest kids. Yarn doesn't slide that well on them so the chance of losing stitches is minimal. I'm looking forward to this wonderful time of sharing and bonding with my 8 and 6 year old. DH thinks it's a great idea. The kids will gain many useful skills including sitting quietly and concentrating on something besides TV.

Reality has a way of removing all romance out of a situation!!!

I've already taught my 6 year old son to knit so I figured that he could handle learning how to cast on. NOPE!!! He tells me, through his tears, that he needs a bunch of knitting on the needle before he can knit. Eight year old DD is not crying at this point, but is clearly not ready for cast on lessons.

So here's what I do instead of pulling out my hair....cast on 10 stitches for each of them and knit a couple of rows in garter stitch. DS takes off needing little help but DD is another matter. This girl has a hard time being still and has the attention span of a gnat. She is easily frustrated and tells me "just because you know how to knit doesn't mean that have to force us to learn." I then explain all the benefits of knitting and tell her that while I'm not forcing her, she still has to try. She is doing quite well technically so I let her go after knitting 10 stitches on her own.
DS is another matter. He is going great guns and tells me that he wants to keep knitting. He knits 2.5 rows in the time his sister knits one. He decided to stop when his sister does. I'll try again tomorrow for another short session. Get them hooked gradually.



Have you ever gone to the movies and got your popcorn in a plastic bucket imprinted with an ad for an upcoming movie? I've got one for Pirates of the Caribbean and last Friday night I picked one up for The Simpson Movie. DS told me that I should keep it for a knitting bucket. Does that kid know me or what? We've also got popcorn in buckets with the kid's combo so they have their own knitting bucket.


WOOHOO!!! I have FOs


This is Stripes. I started her on the plane trip over to Aus. She was very pleased with the final results and #1 and #2 were happy to finally be paired up.

Did I ever tell you that I'm a genius? Well I think so! Okay maybe I was just being very MacGyverish with this pair of socks. Just in case you were wondering the socks were made with Koigu and they feel sooooo nice. Back to my geniusness..... I made the leg one pattern repeat too long thus coming up ever so short at the toe of the second sock.


In a case like this....you can frog the socks and restart, go buy another skein of Koigu (can't as I bought the last of that colour) or improvise.









Using leftovers from another sock, I finished the sock. As you can see while it doesn't exactly blend in, there is not enough to worry about.

Well gotta run, the kids are complaining about being hungry....

Yours in Yarn

The Fibreholic

1 comment:

Nicole said...

It looks great - it's hand-dyed, so some shades can be a little off. I don't think I would have known you "borrowed" unless you mentioned it.

These are beautiful!