The pointy stick thing concludes

It is time to finish up my story about how I learned to use the pointy sticks.  If you've been reading along then you know my grandmother taught me to crochet when I was 5.  I can crochet almost with my eyes closed, without thinking.  I don't need much light and I can skim through a pattern and pretty much have it in my mind. I can pull out rows and rows of crochet and know right where to start.  But learning to use the 2 pointy sticks presented itself as a challenge.

As I posted in the first post nobody in my family knitted.  But sometime after I took up crocheting in earnest I found a little green book in my mother's stash of sewing books and magazines.  I quickly commandeered it for my own.  It featured crochet, knitting, embroidery and tatting and all were excellently described and detailed in very accurate drawings.  I continued my crochet learning with this dear little book.

I think I was in the 4th grade when I discovered a pair of very slim knitting needles and a ball of soft off-white yarn in my mother's sewing stash.  She did not knit and to this day I have not idea why she had this as well as a set of double pointed needles.  But I decided that it was all mine and proceeded to teach myself how to knit.  Let's just say that I managed to cast on and knit a few rows, but that was as far as I got.  I went back to crocheting while wishing that it wasn't so hard to knit because I really wanted to knit.

Although I made a few cotton dish clothes in my young adult years I was not a proficient knitter.  I would always look at knitting patterns and wish I was better and could produce those adorable little things.  At the 2010 Quilt Festival I fell in love with a little bolero type knitted shrug at one of the booths that featured yarn.  The dear lady working there assured me that if I could knit and purl that I could make this sweater.  So $75 later I walked away with 3 skeins of Baby Alpaca yarn and the pattern.  I fussed at myself for spending so much money on something I would not make.  Yes, yes I will I told myself.  So I got the yarn out and started casting on. 

To make this story short, Blossom was still a small puppy at the time and ate three sets of circular needles and I had to start over even more times.  But I knitted while waiting to pick up Jaydon at VBS, I knitted while the twins were born, and I took the knitting bag along on a New England trip. I realized that I needed two more skeins and tracked some down through a shop in Connecticut.  Just before Thanksgiving I finished and it was cool enough at Thanksgiving that I was able to proudly wear the shrug.

These colors are not accurate, it is more of a brown than a blue.

I am still not a proficient knitter, but I can knit and purl.  That's all I need to "do the pointy-stick-thing".  I've found that knitting is very relaxing and I can knit even when I'm tired.  I cannot, however, rip out knitting and then start back into the pattern. 

W C Mercantile in Navasota, Texas



The Tinsmith's Wife in Comfort, Texas
 

In the last few years I've discovered yarn shops that entice me to come in, browse, and buy.  I wonder if it is the colors or the different textures that call to me.  Maybe it is those old buildings that many shops are located in. Like quilts, yarn just seems to belong in an old building.