The KnitWits

Hello all!  Stuff is happening in my life so I am going to blog about it now.

Last night I went to my first knitting class with my friend Laurie.  We got there a few minutes late and the class was so big that we didn't get to sit together which was kind of a bummer BUT we sat on either sides of this nice girl named Brooke. :)  She was already great at knitting so we flanked her and bombarded her with questions haha!

The teacher is really nice and earthy.  (Sounds like a weird description but earthy is the word that kept coming to mind when I thought of her...*shrug*) She has been knitting for 17 years and she started when she was a vendor at the farmers market 17 years ago.  She made homemade paper and catnip potpourri from her garden (see what I mean?  earthy.)  Anywho, while she was there she met these nice ladies that were selling their knit wears and they taught her how. :) nice story. She's kinda funny too! 

She told us we were learning continental knitting as opposed to...throwing? I think that's what she called it.  The history behind it is that back in the 1800's wealthy women, who had never knit before, wanted to learn to knit for something to do (and she said to help with the war effort...someone explain that to me) but they needed a way to distinguish themselves from the women who knit for money (of course!) so they started up this 'throwing' way of knitting and we are learning the continental way.  The way the women who got paid to knit would have knit. :)

ANYway, I was getting very frustrated and discouraged at first (as I tend to feel when I'm not good at something right away. silly.) because I really was NOT getting it.  She had us look over her shoulder while she knit a few stiches then she had us start to work on our own and she came over to each of us to see how we were doing.  When she came to me she had to actually put her arms around me and basically force my fingers to do it.  After much sitting and staring at others, bothering Brooke, bothering Laurie and completely destroying my line of stiches (dunno if this is the right lingo...I'm still a beginner) I had her restart it for me and THEN I finally started to kind of understand what goes where and which twists around whos whatsit.  I felt like, at first, she wasn't really explaining it as if we were beginners.  BUT I think she was probably feeling overwhelmed since her average class size is 4-5 and there were...oh...12-15 in this class!  She told us she has a Tuesday night class so some of the girls will move over there next week. 

When I got home I was feeling frustrated again because I had pretty much forgotten everything I had figured out.  AND she didn't teach us to 'cast on' because she says when she teaches people that skill right at the beginning they often forget rather quickly so she said she will teach us after we get the hang of 'knitting' and 'purling'.  Well, Laurie and I were both pretty worried that when we got home we would mess up our stiches and not know how to start over and then just not be able to practice anymore.  Well. That's exactly what happened.  So I hopped on youtube and watched a video about how to 'cast on' and I figured that out and now I can start over and over and over!  :)

By the end of the 4 weeks we are supposed to have a scarf knitted. :D we'll see how that goes...haha!