Knit how neat!

I had to do some knitting for a class I took in school. I made a top I might still have in a closet back home. Passing that class meant finishing a project during the trimester and that is almost how long it took to “finish” the top. Of course my mom helped me out with speeding things up. My knitting was uneven and this made my mom’s job harder as she tried to imitate my clumsy work, so the teacher would not notice. I passed of course! Now I wonder if that top would still fit me!?I liked knitting, but mostly the knitting that my mother did. I was not really thrilled about my work. It was uneven and took forever to finish. When sewing it is possible to finish a project in a matter of hours. As a seamstress I was sometimes thinking: “Oh! how many things I could have sewn instead!”. But soon I was in the mood again and realized knitting takes time and patience to create pretty useful things out of plain yarn. You create the fabric out of yarn, already shaped and sized conforming to a pattern or just your imagination. Yarn is the medium and you are the sculptor.Many special thanks to my husband Marius who listened to my wishes and gave me the best present ever!

It made me realize that I do love to knit after all, since speed is not an obstacle any more. The bond ultimate sweater machine is not as automated as I would like, basic and simple to use. My mother has a similar wooden knitting machine that I cannot wait to see again when I get to Romania. I remember my mom did not use it that often as it had no instructions and doing lace stitches is time consuming. Maybe sharing Bond’s knowledge with the capabilities of the wood version will be useful Burda has these incredible patterns for knitting and crochet in the latest magazines. I’m familiar with Burda patterns for sewing, but with knitting and crochet it is like learning two different languages. First I went through the process of understanding some of the stitch types, than knowing the abbreviations for them, then the symbols in the charts.I strongly recommend The Complete Encyclopedia of Stitchery for anyone who is considering learning to crochet or knit. This book has it all from tatting to crochet to macrame, knit, rugs, embroidery. Seams that you can read it online from Google Books, just follow the link above.

For crochet NexStitch has these amazing videos and expanations on all stitches you can imagine and wonderful patterns she creates.

The other day me and my colleague Oana were reading a German Knitting and Crochet magazine ModisheMache, from 1990, trying to understand what all the signs in charts mean. I’ll learn these languages someday slowly but surely.

Although the Bond machine comes with a very “vintage” patterns book and they instruct you to knit those patterns first, the yarn is too expensive to waist, so I went in another direction and decided to give this top a try (in red yarn):

If it turnes out nice, I’ll give this one a try:

I would love to be able to crochet these, but I think going over the learning curve for crochet will take longer then expected, even with all the information out there, it needs practice

and the red wrap from Burda May issue.

Hats off for knitters and crocheters! This is not as easy as it seams!

I’ll post back pictures with the progress of the red top 140!

About these ads