As a kid, I hated the weekly crafts classes. It wasn’t that the assignments were boring, it was just that the results of my crafting labour always looked different than what I had envisioned. Different as in worse, that is. Much worse actually. I simply had to face that I just wasn’t any good at the crafts department. Sometimes we’d do a big project and we’d have to do stuff at home as well. While I was not particularly good at knitting and sewing, my grandmom and my mom were. All I had to do was find a way to make them do it. Asking them wasn’t going to do the trick, since they were and still are both firm believers of doing it yourself instead of pretending you did it while in fact somebody else did it. In the end it worked best to act my clumsiest and struggle with kneedles until they could no longer bear to watch me. They’d sigh and take over, murmuring that they would show me once more and next time, I’d really have to do it myself. I didn’t care, I hated anything even slightly crafty. Besides, I considered knitting and sewing to be very uncool and no way would I ever do it again. 

It’s almost 20 years later. I’ve always succesfully avoided thread and needles and the like and that was exactly the way I wanted my life to be. Until a month ago. Strange thoughts came into my head. At first I tried to ignore them, then to persuade myself that they weren’t true. It was just a trick my mind was playing. A strange trick, but a trick nonetheless. Because there was absolutely no way that I wanted to knit, no matter what I was thinking. Knitting is uncool, remember?

Two weeks later I found myself in a shop that I’d never even noticed before, standing in front of a display with knitting needles and seriously wondering what I was doing there. In the end I purchased a pair of needles 4.50 mm, the cheapest yarn I could find and "Twillley’s Book of Easy Knitting - with large and clear stitch diagrams". My plan was to give it a try, no doubt I would remember how seriously uncool knitting was and how bad I was at it. This was a sure way to get it out of my system.

At home I started to read the booklet. I’d never started knitting from scratch, it was always my mom or grandmother who put the stitches onto the needles and they always finished it too. After a couple of tries I had 12 stitches on my needle. That was enough to start with. I was surprised to discover that I could still knit after all these years. Maybe knitting is like swimming, once you master it, you never forget how to do it. I was even more surprised to find out that I actually enjoyed it. Soon I found myself back in the shop that I’d never noticed before for more wool.

I figured a scarf would be the easiest thing to knit. So I cast on 30 stitches and happily started knitting. After a few rows, I noticed I’d dropped a stitch, because there was a tiny hole. When counting the stitches on my needle, I was flabbergasted to find out I had managed to end up with 32 stitches instead. I didn’t really care. This was gonna be my first ever self-knitted scarf, so what if it wasn’t perfectly straight or it had a few little holes where I lost stitches? It’s homemade, it’s unique and it makes me proud to think I did it all by myself, that’s what counts. Soon I finished my wool, but my scarf was too short to be a scarf, so another trip to the shop was needed. I purchased enough wool this time to finish it. I think. Being new at all this, I find it rather hard to guess how much wool is needed for something simple as a scarf. The good thing about scarfs is that they can basically be any length, so I’m safe there.

Telling my family about my knitting lark, the first question my sister asked was "Why?" The answer to that question is that I’ve found out I actually enjoy knitting, despite my previous dislike, and that it’s not uncool like I always thought. I think I read somewhere that Julia Roberts knits as well and she’s a pretty cool lady, so there you go. She’s even going to produce and star in the movie based on The Friday Knight Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs, so keep an eye out for that if you’re into knitting.

 

 My very first scarf - unfinished