Tuesday, July 5, 2011

KnitPost: My love affair with needles and fibers (and knitting websites!)

If we are friends IRL, you probably know my favorite busy-hands activity is knitting.  I learned to knit from my mom about three and a half years ago, and since then I've become a tornado of knit-tivity!

Why do I love to knit?  Ever since I was a little girl, I've been fidgety.  (In case you haven't figured it out by now, my Twitter handle, @je_gigote, means "I fidget".)  I can't even tell you how many thousands of times my mom would hiss at me "Sit. Still!" I just can't do it! And now that I've learned to knit, I can do something with my restless hands and actually be productive.

I love the easy repetition of making stitches, but I also love the challenge of figuring out a new stitch, or how a garment is worked, or making modifications to a pattern to make it a perfect fit.  I love making little gifts for friends and family, and I love that every garment/piece is unique.

I love love love yarn shopping and pattern browsing!  All the beautiful colors, dyes, textures, and fibers of a yarn store are enough to make a color enthusiast like me fall over backwards with happiness.  (Seriously, if you're wondering what I'm on about, go to your local yarn store and just bask in the fiber-y goodness.)  I love looking at patterns and wondering how that would look on me or my mom or my sister or my friend and what yarn I'd use.
Right now I'm working on a super-easy slouchy hat for my mom, and I have a beautiful cardigan that I finished a few weeks ago that needs to be blocked and have buttons sewn on. I promise I'll post pictures of that, because it's a gorgeous, soft, warm garment that I absolutely adore.

If you're wondering what knitting websites feed my addiction, here's a few I love:
Ravelry (The ultimate social network for knitters. Love it.)
Knitty (Awesome knitting ezine. The patterns featured in each issue are super awesome.)
Knitted Bliss (A blog by amazing knitter/designer Julie Crawford, who is smart, beautiful, creative, and Canadian. Basically, I want to be her.)
KnitPicks (Online yarn store. Good quality yarn at excellently low prices. Plus, they sell a ton of books. I go to this site all the time and droll over yarn colorways.)

No comments:

Post a Comment