Knitting out of Necessity

So I will not tell a lie. Last year I attended one Knitwise event, tried to pick up knitting, and left after having tossed the needles and terribly mangled two rows of fabric to the floor. I swore this was not the craft for me, and I should just stick to what I knew. Then the recession hit my family hard. Normally every Christmas, everybody spends way to much money on each other. Well this last Christmas, just about every one of my family members were going through financial difficulties and that last Christmas was probably our last expensive Christmas. Then I remember someone stating we would draw names this year and make homeade presents. My first thought was, "Oh God, I'm screwed!". I have no visible talents than can transform into presents. I really thought I was going to be giving someone a mixed cd for Christmas. This is very shaming considering my dad is a carpenter, my mom can scrapbook and do a whole lot of other nifty things, and my sister is an artist and can paint, sculpt, and use a potters wheel. Everybody could make legitimate gifts that could actually be used, and I was going to be giving away mixed cd's. Of course no one wanted me to draw their name.

Then Craft Wisely came along. It was like my saving grace. I thought, well I was awful at knitting, but maybe if I am surrounded by a bunch of people that can knit, I will pick it up, and might even be able to give away the best Christmas present or at least one of the best. So I had to wrap my mind around the idea that I would be delving into this again.

Now just to be fair, I was still awful, and I think I had the worst practice swatches out of the whole class. I was working on these swatches with my family in Texas, and let's just say there was alot of teasing about my speed, the awfulness of the swatches, and just the fact that I was knitting.

Finally, I got to a place where I could go without dropping stitches or at least catch my mistakes and fix them. Then, I figured out how to purl. So I felt like I was the bomb dot com, and went from not having a decent practice swatch to making my sister a double seed stitched headband for her birthday. Let me just say, for a first project, it looked amazing, and I was pumped. I am an RA, and within seconds of me finishing it, I knocked on all my resident's doors and showed it to them.


I finally just cast off my red scarf project and am very proud of it as well. With each new project that I pick up, I want to learn something new. My headband had a new stitch. My scarf was multicolored, and my baby-blanket to be will be cabled. (which I am very scared of).

Although this craft started out as a necessity, I have quickly fell in love with it, and want to make things all the time, just so I can say, "Look what I made!".