A Great Knit

Bob is away for a few days at a Ministers' Conference [brief rant about the unfairness of the East Midlands Baptists who do not allow spouses along - most of the other regions do...]

So, without any teaching having materialised, I have thrown myself into some craft activity, namely, work on the knitting machine. The KM sort of takes over, so it is best done as a project over a couple of days when I can get everything out, make the mess and then clear it all up again. In Bob's absence, I can listen to the radio** and zip away at the machine.

Machine knitting is a totally different craft from hand knitting - in the latter you have all your stitches on one [or two] needles and can see what the pattern looks like as you knit. In the former, you have hundreds of needles, with just one stitch on each, and the wrong side of the work facing you, so it is something of an act of faith.

I got this machine back in 1983, when Liz was a baby. My friend Libby from New Zealand said everyone in NZ had them, and they were especially good if you had a tall husband, as it was a good way to make large jumpers quickly and cheaply. Bob treated me to this machine from a shop in Streatham. I have yet to master making jumpers for Bob - somehow they've never quite fitted. The first one came out way too small [My Dad wore it for years] The next was big enough apart from the neckline, which wouldn't go over Bob's head comfortably.

However I did make quite a few jumpers for the girls when they were younger- including two amazing ones for Liz with pictures of horses on them. And I have made lots of baby blankets. Also scarves and woolly hats.

I haven't done any MK for about 2 years and somehow I could not get my head round casting on yesterday. I spent the first 90 minutes muttering and struggling with the knit carriage, and every so often, everything fell off the needles and hit the floor!

However it all came right in the end, and I knitted the things I wanted. But now I have all the sewing up to do.

I will post pictures of everything when it is done.

 

**I was listening to BBC7, and they had a dramatisation of Robinson Crusoe, with Roy Marsden. It was utterly brilliant - I had completely forgotten how much of Daniel Defoe's Christian principles come across in the original book. My memories are coloured by recollections of the TV series of the 1960s [can you have coloured memories of a black and white programme?]

Anyone else remember watching this?