Scared by String: My Knitting story, from intimidation to confidence
i had desire but no one to help me
I was 25 years old, and I wanted to make my soon-to-be-born son a baby blanket.
I didn’t know how to knit or crochet and didn’t live near anyone who could teach me. However, I was celebrating Thanksgiving with my brother and his wife, Jennifer, and she knew how to crochet. After a trip to Walmart for yarn and a crochet hook, and a few minutes on the living room couch, Jennifer gave me what I needed to take the first steps in what has become an incredibly rewarding 27-year career in fiber arts.
I remember well those first clumsy chain stitches on that first baby blanket. I remember the joy of wrapping my baby in something I’d created with my own hands. I also remember the frustration I felt when, a few years later, I wanted to create a cardigan sweater for my daughter and could only find knit patterns that appealed as I searched for crochet patterns. Eventually, I decided I needed to learn to knit.
so i learned to knit alone (and incorrectly)
I didn’t have anyone nearby to teach me to knit, so I used what I could find on the internet and at the local public library to teach myself to knit. I started with scarves so I would have something useful to give away as I learned. I chose new projects to learn the skills I needed to be able to knit the cardigan I would eventually make for my daughter. Along the way, I discovered that my self-education had some major flaws, learned how to do better, and made corrections.
I became extremely attracted to the varied challenging techniques that can be found in knitting and took on commissions and projects specifically to challenge myself and learn as many new things as I could. I loved exploring different cultural and historical techniques and patterns. When I turned to designing my own knitting patterns, they often involved solving the puzzles posed by fascinating techniques or historical pattern elements.
i learned alone so you don’t have to
What all this journey has done has given me a wealth of experience to share with fellow knitters of all levels of experience. I’ve taught dozens of people to knit, from reluctant teenaged boys to surgeons to new grandmothers. I’ve helped relatively new knitters gain confidence with basic patterns, and more experienced knitters experiment with techniques that might better suit their current projects. I’ve helped panicked knitters rescue projects they thought might be ruined (I haven’t lost a patient yet!), and advanced knitters polish their finishing work to take their knitting to heirloom quality.
The best part of being a knitting educator
All that work is incredibly rewarding to me, but the most rewarding of all is helping a knitter create something that is more than a knitted item, but a work of the heart, made as a gift for a loved one. There is nothing in the world like making something with your own hands for someone you love. The materials are chosen especially with that person in mind, the colors picked just for them, the yarn meant to be comforting next to their skin. The time spent in creation is time spent thinking of the loved one. This kind of gifting is personal and precious, and there is no part of knitting I love more than helping a knitter gain the confidence or skills needed to make and give these sorts of unique gifts of the heart and hands.
you can experience the joy knitting brings just like i did
I loved holding my baby boy in the blanket Jennifer helped me make. I loved knowing he was wrapped in the love I’d made with my hands even when I’d laid him down, still wrapped in the blanket. I’d love to help you the way Jennifer helped me, whether you’d like to knit your baby a blanket or scarf, send your son to college in hand knit socks, or make your mother a cabled sweater for Christmas.