Happy knitting

Hey guess what? I can knit!!!

A good hour or so of head scratching later...

I haven't knitted since I was little - maybe nine or ten years old, I can't quite remember. Back then, it was the women in my mum's side of the family, all super knitters, who taught me. Or tried to. In the main, it was a frustrating affair, as I was the only left hander, and seemed to want to knit back to front, as my nan would say.

When my friend Sang sent me a toddler scarf kit for my birthday recently, I knew it would be coming with me to Devon to plug the gap of not bringing my sewing machine on holiday (because that would be wrong, right?).

Anyhow, I foolishly thought it would just somehow sort of come flooding back to me, and that I would be clacking away within minutes.

It did not. In fact, I found myself eating my own words, and asking my husband if I could borrow his phone in order that I might look up some step by step instructions for how to cast on. I should point out, that one of the many things I (usually) love about where we holiday in Devon, is that phone and internet connections are incredibly poor. Cue a big roll of the eyes from husband, upon realising quite how keen I was to learn to knit.

Perfectly portable for the beach!

I put the needles down to admire and share in the excitement
that a butterfly had landed on biggest girl's hand

Me and the newly rediscovered crafty activity were getting along nicely. Then, disaster! I slammed my finger in the boot of the car (whilst rushing to get a favourite bedtime toy for the youngest girl, so that she would be in bed happily and I could, er... knit).

Finger throbbing, and practising the kind of breathing exercises they encourage on antenatal, I soldiered on. I made up a farm yard themed bedtime story (requests for The Adventures of the Three Baby Donkeys were rife from day three onwards of our week away), kissed the girls goodnight, and took my poorly finger back downstairs. 

Sympathy being a bit thin on the ground for my liking, I took a picture of my sore finger, wiggled it to assess if I could still knit, and reached for the chocolate biscuits. They helped. Well, sort of.

I spent much of the night awake because my finger was throbbing so much. I kept dreaming I had woken up to find my finger had dropped off overnight. A bit melodramatic, I know. But it really did hurt. A friend of mine has since told me that when she did a similar thing to her finger, she used a small drill bit to drill a hole in her nail to relieve the pressure. OUCH. She clearly has more guts than me.

Anyhow. A week on, my finger is fine now, just a bit of purple on the nail. The youngest girl keeps asking after it, and kissing it. Very sweet, really.

So it turns out I really rather enjoyed knitting. Very laid back craft, not needing too much attention, and can be done whilst everyone else is pottering around doing what they want to do. Not sure what my mum or godmother will make of the state of my tension, and all the loose ends (what are you meant to do with them?), but it has been fun. Sang and I have challenged each other to make a scarf to swap ready for Christmas, so I'll be tapping them up for tips next time I see them.

And now that the first scarf is finished, I have no idea who is going to get it. Whilst my mum seems to effortlessly trot out knitted items in multiples of three that arrive through the post in jiffy bag parcels, I know I am not up to such a task. And yet I have three girls. The questions ("So, who is it going to be for, Mummy?"), led by the eldest, and then the arguments, started before the scarf was finished. I quickly realised no solution was to be had. Not even just giving it away to someone outside of the family. So for now, I have just quietly put the scarf away, until they forget about it.

About a day after finishing it, I got twitchy. Is this a sign of addiction, I wonder? So, still without proper internet access, and, ready for a new challenge, I had a go at making something with the little bits of leftover wool from the scarf. Is it just a little bit nutty old lady like to randomly decide to make an egg cosy with a pom pom on top, and then gleefully pop it in the post to surprise a friend? Maybe.