Knitting: Not just for your granny! (Knitting)

Member Name: Poison_kitty

Product:	Knitting
Date:	10/03/09 (119 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: It's creative, and when you're finished you have something useful and unique

Disadvantages: has a reputation for being oldfashioned!

When I got back to Dooyoo, the things I most wanted to review were on two subjects - horses and knitting! I was sad to see that Dooyoo had so little to offer with regards to reviews on all the things I like, and more to the point, the knitting category is relegated to the toys and games section! My knitting things are precious and as much as I like children, they're not getting their grubby mitts on my £15 per ball angora! So I thought I would take it upon myself to educate my fellow Dooyooers on what I do and maybe persuade the powers-that-be to give us a more serious-looking category!

I'll admit, when I first started knitting I was very small, and my Nan gave me pink plastic (and pretty blunt) needles to start with (I still have those!). I used cheap acrylic/nylon yarn which has a good memory of being straight, good when you're making lots of mistakes undoing and reknitting the same bits of yarn over and over again. But I was learning, and what learners do is spend as little money as possible because they know they will break and ruin things - after all we learn from our mistakes. I think this is how people see the whole knitting world - all cheap needles and cheap acrylic yarn and old ladies.

Firstly, I'd like to talk about needles. Basically, think of a material and I bet someone has made a set of needles from it. Lots of people like needles made of wood - rosewood and ebony in particular, which can set you back around £20 for two. Wood is good for slippery fibres, especially yarns containing silk or cotton, as wood causes more friction against the yarn and they're less likely to drop off the needle. Wood is slightly bendy, meaning that it tends to make your wrists ache a little less, but hold them too tightly and the smaller sizes are likely to break (and for God's sake don't sit on them!). Aluminium is stronger and lighter but less yielding and people have linked this to sore wrists. It is a great choice for less slippery fibres, or in lace knitting when the yarn is so thin you can barely see it. Plastic is a bit between the two in terms of friction, and it's generally quite cheap, but some people like knitting on plastic. I'm knitting a lace scarf on my very first pair of needles, which are plastic and pink, but they're slightly bendy and don't hurt my hands, slightly sticky to the stitches, light and shorter than any of the other needles I've got. My interchangeable circular needles are plastic too and believe me they've been a godsend!
Just to quickly mention that there are three main types of needles - straights (which are the ones you've no doubt seen the most of) which have a point at one end and a stopper of some description on the other; Circular which have two needles about the size of your palm and a cable connecting them; and Double Pointed Needles (DPNs or sock needles) which have both ends pointed for doing small circular work.
Now bear in mind needles come in many different sizes, the last time I looked I had around 36 sets of needles...

I'd like next to talk about yarn. Yarn is not just the acrylic that your grandmother knitted your school jumpers from, neither is it just wool. Basically, if it can be spun, it can be knitted. Acrylic is indeed usually the cheapest, but even acrylic has it's good brands and bad - some are definitely softer than others and it pays to read reviews and ask other knitters before you order. Wool is exactly the same, and most knitters now know the different properties of the fibre between big-name sheep breeds such as Corriedale, Bluefaced Leicester and Swaledale. On the more expensive side of things you have your angora (from the angora rabbit), kid-mohair (mohair from baby angora goats) and silk. Alpaca is also lovely to knit with and is VERY warm, but can be expensive depending on where you find it. There are various individuals who will actually spin your pets' winter coat for you, and I know several people who have spun their dog's hair and ended up with a very soft, warm yarn. If I collected all the hair my horse sheds around march time, I'd probably have enough to make next year's winter wardrobe!

This may come as a shock to a few people, but knitting is quietly taking over the internet! For a number of years now, we've had our own version of myspace/facebook called Ravelry. This is where we like to show off our projects, people sell patterns they've devised and yarn they've spun. If you have a question about anything even tenuously knitting related, there is someone on ravelry who can not only answer it for you, but come up with about a dozen new possibilities regarding the answer! We also have a growing number of online knitting magazines, www.knitty.com being my personal favourite because it contains pages and pages of free patterns for things I actually want to knit, has loads of tips and how-to's on various knitting techniques by people who actually work in the clothing industry. There are literally hundreds of knitting forums out there too; I'm just waiting for someone to invent a way of knitting and typing at the same time. And if you want final proof of the invasion, type "knitting" into youtube...

If you're thinking of giving knitting a go, you don't even have to work up the courage of being seen walking into a yarn shop, there are loads online that do really good deals on the common stuff (try www.kempswoolshop.com) as well as those specialising in luxury fibres.

Well I hope this article has sparked a few creative minds, and even if you don't get on with knitting, there's always crochet...

Summary: Great for people like me who are never quite happy with clothes in shops