Crossed to the dark side

As a serious crocheter of eight years standing, I have finally turned my hand to knitting! So now I'm all fingers and thumbs again and sticking out tongue. My first and most apposite reflection is that you need more elbow room to knit (but on second thought, perhaps it's just that I am a beginner and will learn to keep my elbows to myself on the train in future??). 

I started with the most enormous needles because I happen to have them from teaching Broomstick crochet. 25mm pins make for quick knits - which for someone with my attention span is a Good Thing. Before too long I had a stretch of garter stitch to show for my over long period of forgetting to intake breath, and sitting at a rather strange angle. Glad I wasn't in public. The superchunky swatch was tactile and drapey, with lots of flaws. I switched to some 4.5mm pins that someone who didn't know me very well gave me as a thank you present a while back. Now I was making a fine stockinette in DK yarn. It really looked like knitting - with holes and extra loops and tweaks and catches - but knitting just the same. I didn't look like a knitter though.

I popped to the market and bought myself some 5.5mm pins to use with chunky and found my level. Tried a touch of ribbing before switching to my new favourite - Moss Stitch. Things have started to smooth down and speed up now, and I've even worked out how to go back on myself and undo some wrongs. Very satisfying.

Back on home turf, meanwhile, I've been Bavarian Crocheting round and round and round until I had to stop and wait for more yarn to arrive from an online store. And trying to follow a Tunisian pattern with one or two missing bits and bum steers in the instructions, from a new book I bought on baby clothes. I should write to Robyn Chachula. Maybe I will… when I've done this. I've also been testing out an interesting yarn that stretches, and am trying to devise a pattern for a chic little swimsuit. Taking too long though without kicks. Gotta have crochet kicks!

On Tuesdays come my ladies (and one gent), and where I was going to get on with my Loom Knitted scarf (the loom arrived in the post yesterday), I ended up not, because my help was required. That's OK. It's all part of the fun of it. Professional musician, Susan, recently swapped crotchets for crochet, and had taken on a dauntingly large project - an Irish themed blanket made of shamrocks in square motifs. We worked on the second stage today - as she has made all forty five shamrock shapes already.

My one gent, lovely Andrew, was making waves over by the fish tank - an unusual version where the mountains were 2tr in next stitch x2 and the troughs were 2trtog in next st x2, instead of the more familiar groupings of 3. I drew some charts for him to demonstrate how to make sure the troughs and peaks stayed strictly lined up.

I also drew a chart for Mandy after we worked together to devise a way to square off a hexagon in two easy rows.

My element. AND we had choco Leibnitz!

I've only gone barmy like this because I have largely finished work on my book - Bobbles Puffs and Popcorns - for Quarto, due out September. Not QUITE at the printers yet but oh so close!

Pictures to Come. :)