Learning to Knit

Something that piqued my interest recently is all the handmade goods for sale in Halifax. There's a lovely shop called Love, Me that sells locally crafted clothes, papergoods, and art, among so many other things. I love looking around that store.

From economics, we know that where there's a demand, the smart thing is to produce a supply, so there are also lots of neat craft stores. I first went into The Loop because I was after embroidery patterns. Well, if we're honest I went in because of the color and the interesting looking contraption in the window (later I discovered it's to spin the balls of yarn). Their shop has shelves of wool yarn from all sorts of animals and beautiful examples of different techniques. They also offered classes.

The class I took was called Knitting for Absolute Beginners. It's not entirely accurate, since my mom has taught me how to handle needles, and in the back of my mind, I do actually remember one night that I stayed up till midnight, learning to knit from the internet (successfully- I just never did it after that!) but I wanted to start from scratch. The instructor's name was Cathy, and the class was composed of six girls, around my age and very eager to learn.

Well, in the proceeding three hours, we learned it all! We learned how to cast on, knit, pearl, cast off, and after several jokes about holes and "cat bums," she taught us the proper way to add and subtract stitches to create lace! I really enjoyed it and am busy working on my project: a simple scarf composed completely of knitted stitches (no pearling patterns). But once it's finished, I can move on to all sorts of things- i.e. lace. :) Cathy was a wonderful instructor and maybe next fall, once I'm more comfortable with all the stitches, I'll try another of The Loop's courses on circular knitting (hats, socks, mittens, etc).

[Photo is not my scarf. Just an example of "lace" so you know what I'm talking about.]

Photo by Sally http://www.flickr.com/photos/sallypics/289583941/ Some rights reserved.