Learning to knit. Slowly. Sort of. Maybe. Eventually.

 

LOOK WHAT ARRIVED TODAY.* 

Even the TAPE is cute

         I suppose I should put some knitting on them.  Umm.  I think I am purling** but it is not a pretty sight.   It looks kind of like Extreme Lint:  the sort of thing you might find after the dust rhinos under the bed have morphed into something that fights back if you go after it with a broom.***  Or like something an evil sorcerer is using to imprison a rival.  Every time he yanks on one of the knots a different arm or leg or liver goes 'ouch'.   I think I need more practise.  Like maybe a lot more practise.  I still haven't tried attaching a third row to the deformed monstrosity that is my second row.  For one thing I'm not quite sure which extrusions are the bits I'm supposed to be adding the knit row to.†

            I've told you, haven't I, that the tower captain at my old tower—East Persnickety, where I started to learn to ring the first time twelve years ago—used to say of his wife (he'd been a widower some while when I knew him) that she'd picked up bell ringing quickly because she was used to reading knitting patterns?

            It doesn't work the other way.  Unless of course there's an unsubtle comment on my bell ringing going on here.  Wait a flaming minute though—my old tower captain's wife didn't ring handbells.  If I can ring the gorblimey 3-4 to ungleblarging bob major I can learn to knit.  Probably.  I seem to have said something reckless to Niall tonight about learning the 5-6 to bob major too.  I think it's a displacement activity about learning to knit. . . .

 * * *

Oooooh. Carrying on the O.O.O. theme

 * In case you're interested:   DesignsbyTami.etsy.com and DesignsbyTami.com  http://www.designsbytami.com/Needlesnhooks.html  Somebody some time can tell me what stitch markers are.  Are they NECESSARY?  I notice that she also does these in ROSES.

            I am still haunted by these however:  http://www.etsy.com/listing/65917807/rose-quartz-handmade-knitting-needles-us  But isn't size 16 kind of huge?  What do you knit on size-16 needles?  Skateboards?  Jacuzzis?  

** Remember that the double whammy doodah cast-on I'm using http://www.knittinghelp.com/videos/cast-on means that you've already got a line of knitting—so the video tells me—and therefore your second row is going to be purling, not knitting.  Or something.  Anyway.  I'm still working on that second row of maybe purling.  I told you I had a lot of trouble finding a purling video that starts with the second row instead of halfway down your hauberk.^  If I could get that far, why would I need a video on how to purl?  But violinknitter found this for me:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UH-htXoBwQ which is actually helpful except for the tiny little detail that her FINGER IS IN THE WAY for the crucial ducking-behind-the-horizontal-needle-and-doing-something-with-that-loop moment.  Maybe this is inevitable.  Maybe it's part of the Funny Knitting Handshake equivalent for the cognoscenti, the upper level haruspices^^:  when you meet in a yarn shop do your eyes flicker and you make a quick, faster than uninitiated eyes can follow gesture with an index finger?^^^  And then you can get on with discussing yak yarn and the best ply for sword scabbards?^^^^

Yes, I'm obsessed. And your--ahem--point would be?

^ Serious knitting 

^^ Surely there's a divinatory aspect to this knitting business?   A snarl of yarn must be just as good as a snarl of intestine, and less messy too.  Aside from not having to kill anything+.  Although the 'snarl' part may be the knitter . . . Hey, am I supposed to have undone any yarn I'm planning on knitting as opposed to keeping for a pet, and wound it up into BALLS?   At the moment since all I'm doing is fraying the hell out of the first three feet or so of my first floppy lump of it-came-this-way store yarn it's not too relevant but I suspect it may become so.  I mean, I suppose I'd better hope it does. 

+ Just shave it a little.  Careful with that thing, sonny, it's sharp.   We don't want any inadvertent haruspexing here, right?

^^^ I SAID INDEX FINGER, OKAY?

^^^^ Doesn't frelling Ravelry+ have a GLOSSARY?  'Glossary' has no matches in the search.  THANKS.  This is a lot like a video for how to purl when you're halfway through the twenty-third sleeve for your brothers the swans.  So if 'fingering' is for lightweight yarn, what is the term for heavyweight yarn?  Suitable for sword scabbards and tower bell cosies? ++

+ ARRRRRGH.  Have just lost another half hour getting hopelessly lost following my nose through some of the outlying suburbs of Ravelry.  A folk and fairy tale forum?  What? 

++ No, I wouldn't put it past me to buy a set of handbells so I can knit cosies for them.  I am pretty jealous of the felted wool bell-bags one of Niall's colleagues made for him and his bells. Niall, just by the way, was late today—Colin and Fernanda were already here and we were sitting around with our hands twitching waiting for the man with the BELLS to show up.  I NEED my own handbells!  Clearly!  And then of course I could knit cosies for them . . . in lurid colours . . . I'm looking forward to this. . . .~

~ Uh-oh

*** The dust rhinos don't have a chance under my bed.  I have boxes of books, of All-Stars and of vitamins^ all jostling for position under there.  And the hoover.  Which is dusty. 

^ I have ME.  I take amazing numbers of vitamins.  And I tend to buy them in wholesale quantities for the slight break on the severalth-mortgage price.  

† http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xho-iQdGNE&feature=channel   Sigh.