My knitting has progressed nicely over the last few weeks. With the body piece I’m now at the lenght where the sleeves will be inserted. From now on it will get a bit more complicated. No more straight knit and pearl!
I faintly can remember how to knit but I haven’t knitted anything for years. Although knitting is a bit like riding a bicycle: I can’t explain it but the moment I’m holding two needles in my hand I know what to do with it.
I was already toying with the idea of knitting something for a while but somehow I couldn’t find anything I’d like. But on one of my strolls through the world wide web I came across this fabulous knitted cardigan on ‘not martha’ and I instantly fell in love with it. I have to have one and the only way to get it is by knitting it myself.
When I was a kid, about 7 or 8 years old, I learned how to sew pants for myself. They were very simple pants, nothing complicated; just two legs and an elastic on top. My mum always had a sewing machine and I was allowed to use it already as a kid. There was always a big box of fabric scraps and I sew all sorts of things together. Later on I had some crafts lessons at school where I did some more sewing and learned to do some more complicated things.
When I was about 7 or 8 years old a friend of my family taught me how to make a knotted wristband. I started off with a simple stripe pattern to get the hang of the techniques. Over time I got more adventurous and tried more complicated patterns.
Knotting friendship bracelets was pretty big when I went to school. We gave them as a present to our friends, hence the name friendship bracelet. The more bracelets you had tied around your wrist the more friends you had. A little bit like facebook in a pre-internet world.
This weekend I went to the second part of my silver jewellery workshop with Barbara Ryman. It was all about ring making.