A Brief history of Knitting

   The short-ish version of my knitting history starts about 1969. It was a crafty era and knitting was one of the crafts I tried. The only instructor/instruction I could find was a thin book from Sprouse-Ritz.

    My first project was a dark brown acrylic scarf in stockinette. Yes, it curled. I wore it anyway. It was a non-perfectionist era.

   I don't remember buying patterns, but all I made were scarves and drawstring bags finished with embroidery. I was big on making embroidered drawstring bags out of various textiles. Those I never used, but I liked to make them.

   Knitting ended in 1973 when I transferred to the University of California at Davis as a chem major the same year 4,000 students applied for 500 openings in med school. Chemistry was the weed-out class.

   I graduated in Economics. 1975 was an interesting time to study economics. Plus, I already had the math and the abstract thinking down.

   In 2000, after mulling it over for a year or two, I took a knitting class from a nice-looking yarn store half a mile from my house. The class didn't include finishing and the store didn't have drop-in circles. I didn't want to do scarves.

    So I picked an especially easy sweater out of this book and started in. Except the easy sweater body was 4 rectangles in 2 colors. The first one came out trapezoidal as I got used to knitting. The yarn I chose (not the one called for in the pattern) was a slubby, itchy tweed and hard to work with. I set it aside.

   The next summer I took another beginning course from Karen Alfke at Churchmouse Yarns and Teas on Bainbridge Island. I had a completed pair of felted slippers when the class was done. I was stoked. And hooked.

   I went to Karen's weekly circle regularly, including on September 11th. The group of us there that day still gets together occasionally.

   And I made the cover sweater from the Vogue book. But with a different yarn and I changed the neck. Karen makes the ideal teacher for me. We both prefer to do our own thing (Unpatterns) in our knitting and she shows me how to do that.

   I'd started to design completely from scratch just before my recent hiatus. I want to do more designing. A week ago I started a sketchbook and have 6 ideas drawn up so far. I haven't even done the ideas for the yarn I already have stashed.

   I'm not a fast knitter. At my present rate, I need never worry about running out of yarn or ideas. That's fine with me. I'm patient. And I'm a process knitter.