Knit & Crochet Blog Week

I saw tonight on a few people's blog Knit & Crochet Blog Week. I think this is a nifty idea, especially to find out more about the bloggers we read. So I am going to do it too. I know it is technically it is already Tuesday, but here is Monday's. I will do Tuesday's later today.

Starting Out

How and when did you begin knitting/crocheting? was it a skill passed down through generations of your family, or something you learned from Knitting For Dummies? What or who made you pick up the needles/hook for the first time? Was it the celebrity knitting ‘trend’ or your great aunt Hilda?

I don't even remember how old I was when I learned to crochet. My mother taught me and my sisters when we were very young to sew, crochet, and knit. I never took to knitting. As far as I was concerned, why did I need to fiddle around with two sticks if crocheting only needed one. At first I made little purses and shirts for my dolls. Basically rectangles and squares that were then crocheted together. As I got older I made blankets. I crocheted off and on . . . more off than on.

Then when I moved to Ithaca, NY. I ended up having a job a candy store where there was a lot of down time. We were allowed to read, craft, whatever when customers were not in the store. There was an A.C. Moore a few stores down in the mall, so one time at lunch I walked down there, picked up some plastic hooks, light green, dark green, and tan yarn. I used the blanket pattern on the back of one of the yarn labels to work on a blanket.






I continued to crochet large baby blankets for co-workers who had babies.

Around the end of 2005, I started to notice all the knitting hype. I became interested because it seemed like there were so many more things you could do with knitting. Also, because it was so big at the time, there were plenty of books and information in general to find, which wasn't always so easy with crochet. So I figured, I can do this. I knew from my Mom's attempt to teach us when we were little, that I couldn't do metal needles, so I bought some bamboo needles and some acrylic yarn to practice stitches out of a book I bought, Big Book of Knitting Stitch Patterns. Only I bought the hard back. I still have it and still use it.

My Mom found out I was learning to knit, so when she came out to visit we went to the LYS down the street. She picked a pattern and some yarn for some gloves she wanted. This would be my first knitting project:








Pattern: Gauntlets from a Lana Grossa Pamphlet.
Yarn: Tofutsies
Needles: US 2

Yes, my first project was on size two bamboo needles and was in the round. I think this is part of the reason that I love dpns so much. :)

I still knit and crochet. I have been slowly trying to improve my crochet skills. I find more and more things that I think if they can be done in knitting, I should be able to do them with crochet too. I am a bit stubborn.