Has become addicted to knitting!

When people think about the word knitting, they imagine a bunch of old grannies sitting in a room together with tea and cakes, busy knitting scarfs and jumpers. These, they then send off to relatives as Christmas presents, which are then shoved at the back of a cupboard and forgotten till the next cleaning day. When discovered the knitted item is tossed to a Charity shop, perhaps never or only wore once, because it is too big/small/bright/childish or just out of fashion. For a long time now I've known that knitting is a dying skill. This is mostly because people don't want to learn it or think its just too hard for them to understand. Also because in the world of today when we can just pop down to a shop or order straight from the Internet, all the clothes one could ever want are easy to buy, (and often so cheap it makes you wonder how shops can really afford to sell items for less then the cost of the material it was made from!) so there's no need to make your own clothes like there has been in the past.

I remember going to primary school in jumpers and a pinny that my mum had knitted and feeling so different to the other children who were wearing new factory made things. She'd knit other jumpers for me as well and I guess because I was young, I had no taste for her home-made clothes and this lead her to stop knitting for awhile

My mum has recently picked up knitting again and over the past few years she has made a lot of things for me, herself and my youngest brother and she's even subscribed to a knitting magazine! Mostly these are things like jackets for the summer and winter, which look really nice and get lots of compliments from people. Baby clothes for my cousin's children or her friends and she's currently keeping some for mine and my brothers' children in the near future. Fingerless gloves, cuffs and socks have been her hardest to make creations and she has had a lot of fun knitting toys from Alan Dart's patterns; two cats, a witch, Jack O'lantern, a pirate, a frog prince and Yuletide Gnomes.

She taught me to knit awhile ago and I can purl (Basically knitting backwards) too, but because it took me a long time to do these skills correctly she has never taught me how to cast on and cast off (putting the wool on the needles and taking it off). So last week we choice the pattern to make the Christmas presents for my uni friends (because the Yuletide Gnomes we knitted last year went down a treat.) and because it was so simple to do she taught me how to cast on and off. Now I'm busy making lots of knitting and practising with different wools with my new learnt skills! At the minute I'm also learning to decrease (were you put to stitches together and make the knitting smaller) which can some times be tricky, but I'm getting the hand of it now.

So Knitting has become a passion for me now and it really does run in my family! I've many memories of my Nana knitting blankets and hats whilst I was curled in front of her gas fire watching TV on cold winter nights. My dad's mum also use to knit and so did my mum's great aunt (who taught my mum because she knits left handed) I feel happy to carry on what I see as a tradition for my family and hopefully my friends will just love their presents this year!

This is Willamina witch and Jack O' lantern, The Yuletide Gnomes!
sitting on my bookcase at uni and
both were made by my mum.

Ally and her Gnome