Menokreatikkul; Saturday Stitches

You'll recall I have only recently rediscovered a yen for knitting, as an alternative to crocheting. Crochet will always be my first love; it's second nature to me, and I delight in the fact that even after 60 years, I can still learn new stuff with the hook.

The knitting, though, has proven a surprising draw. I couldn't quite believe that when I started using a pair of the surprise pins, once reacquainted with casting on, my fingers seemed to remember the process. A few weeks in, and a few mini-scarves later, as well as having discovered that certain yarns work better for one craft or the other, I realised I wanted to explore more. A lot of patterns called for circular pins and/or Double Pointed Needles (DPNs)...an excuse, with the birthday month, to do a bit of shopping.

(Apologies for poor photos: it has been a week where electric light has had to be used, as the weather went dark again...)

Neither of these sets was in danger of breaking the budget, but they are of surprisingly good quality. Both of these tools are entirely new to me, for even when I was knitting all those years ago, the only thing different I used was a holding pin for dropped stitches, be that for cabling or neck and arm holes.

The first venture with the circular pins was the gray and red scarf you saw a few weeks back - working it from end to end instead of side to side. It didn't feel entirely comfortable, but it did produce quite satisfactory results. In theory, I should have been able to make the hat on the circulars, too... however, at that early point, I couldn't see how it could be done, as the circumference was much smaller than even the shortest wire for the pins. 

Then, a couple of weeks back, I heard mention of the magic loop for circular knitting - which, it turned out, was nothing like the magic loop used in crochet. The latter is a starting stitch technique for working a circular item, whilst the former is a way to work the circular needles on a small item.

By using a longer wire and tugging it through half the work, effectively working two sides, hats and other such items can be produced. I liked how easy it was to test the item 'in situ' as well... this was my first hat produced on circular pins. No pattern, of course, just letting my instinct work. In future, I would make a slightly deeper center body before working the crown, but this was perfectly wearable - and will be!

With that confidence booster, I might seek out some patterns now. 

As for the DPNs, in truth, I have always been a little afraid of them. Granny, aunts, and mother were all great sock knitters and used DPNs all the time, but it seemed like a whole other science to me. Time to get over myself. If one can't be bothered with the constant looping of a wire, then these are the way to go for hats, socks, mitts and so on.

I didn't go straight into using them as multiples. I got the feel for them first by using them to work another little neckerchief, which was much more comfortable for the small item, compared to using the great big long standard pins. 

I left them alone for a few more weeks, but at the start of this week, I decided (due to a drop in temperatures) to make a pair of arm warmers. A quick search online to gather some basics of how to cast onto three pins and then work the round from each, and off I went...

It was tricky stuff! The first one was far from perfect, and it took a while to get any kind of rhythm going, but it did eventually start to feel like I knew what was going on.

Testing for sizing was still quite easy, if looking rather more hazardous! 

One of the things that happened a few times was that I would forget to engage the fourth (empty) pin to work each section, and I would have to then transfer the relevant number of stitches back onto the third pin... sigh... Anyhoo... by the time I got to the end of the first arm, things were feeling more familiar, and the second went relatively smoothly - and looks smoother, if studied closely. 

Challenge met, now to build on that practice!