Along with painting and drawing, my other great hobby is knitting. I love that its neat (no set up or clean up involved) and I can do it while watching TV or just relaxing. I got into knitting after one winter Saba and I were going to take a class at JoAnn Fabrics, and being that it was winter and we live in Albany, that day there was a huge snowfall and the class was cancelled. I was really looking forward to learning this new craft though, and so I resorted to the powers of youtube.
This one woman named Judy basically showed me the ropes (or the yarns, haha). Her channel on youtube is called Knitting Tips by Judy. If anyone is interested in learning to knit, I would highly recommend her. She has videos of how to do a bunch of different types of stitches, how to knit on different types of needles, how to count rows, etc.
I've been knitting for a little over two years now. I've made some blankets, scarves, and leg warmers. I'm still working on mastering the art of making 'fingers' for gloves, and decreasing stitches to make hats, but, all in good time.
So when I first started knitting back in 2010, I got some size 8 needles and multicolored yarn (although I wish I had done this in regular yarn, because you could probably see the stitches better), and I watched a bunch of Judy's videos and knitted a whole bunch of stitches together for practice. I think I'm going to do it again with the more complicated stitches that I can do now, because it's so easy to go back to that piece and remember what a stitch looked like, and I have the patterns for the stitches written down with it. So anyway, this is the first thing I ever made:
Yes, it looks funky, but it has my first practice stitches for a garter stitch, seed stitch, rib stitch, basket weave, bamboo stitch and purl.
So then after that came my first actual piece, this blanket that I made with little hearts in it. Still one of my beginning ones, so I was still trying to figure out the basics in this one, but its all a variation of simple knit and purl stitches. This is the pattern for the Heart Blanket.
So now that I had gotten the hang of it, I tried to make a cowl for myself. I cannot remember where I found the knitting pattern for this, and I really wish I had saved it somewhere because I love the way it came out as a cowl. You could do this pattern on circular or straight needles, but I did them on straight because I wanted to gauge exactly how long the cowl would be.
After that, I had the idea that I wanted to do something with a lace pattern. I really love the way lace looks, but most of the patterns I found were for crochet, which is a craft that is still a complete mystery to me. So I found some really nice large lace patterns in a book that I found from the craft store. If anyone is interested in the pattern for this, I'd be more than happy to send it your way. I believe it's called the 'Lacy Chevron'. I alternated between using a single thread and double thread, just for some variation, which is why the middle section looks a bit thicker.
I remember when I went to Boston last year with my family, I saw this girl walking down the street with this huge white scarf, and I really loved the way it looked. It was chunky and warm, and I decided I wanted one just like it. I remember searching through stores and not really finding anything, and so I decided, perhaps I should just make one for myself. I pieced together this pattern myself just getting ideas from different stitches that I had seen.
There are two knit libraries online that I use the most. This one from Knitting on the Net and this one from Knitting Queen. So anyway, I pieced together a couple stitches I liked and knit myself a huge infinity scarf that is extremely chunky and warm. This is me in my cozy scarf.
And finally, in my knitting ventures. My sister Samira and my Brother-in-law Asad (whom I call Bia and BIL) decided that they wanted some knitted goodies. Bia requested leg warmers and BIL wanted a scarf (which I'm still working on). I had never made leg warmers before, and didn't even know that they made 9-inch circular needles before I started these. So I found this pattern which I thought was really cute and followed it exactly. For future leg warmer making though, I would probably make the top cuff a bit longer so it's easier to turn over boots. This is the site for the Spiral Leg Warmers
As for Asad's scarf, that's still in progress. I'll update that onto here whenever I finish. It's a multicolored scarf with 5 small cables so it knits up pretty slowly, and it has to be about 72 inches long. I am currently at 52 inches, so, it's getting there, slowly but surely.
So I'm no where near professional level with knitting, It's just a hobby I do for fun, but it's exciting because I get warm and cozy things out of it. :)
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