My Journey To Knitting

My journey to knitting began much like many others, being taught by ladies in my family. I was fascinated at a young age, maybe 8 to 10, by all needle crafts and everything soft and squishy. Over the years, my grandmother and aunts taught me to sew, knit and crochet. I created a myriad of imperfect rectangles, bags with no structure, pants with no shaping and countless granny squares.

Fast forward to my late teens and early twenties and I was avidly quilting (some have even said “aggressively quilting”). For my college graduation, my parents gifted me a beautiful vintage Singer Featherweight, it was my first (and only!) sewing machine and still works flawlessly.

This is where things start to change and the perfect storm begins to brew for me to rediscover and fall head over heels for knitting.

Factor #1: Moving

My then fiancé, now husband, and I moved in together and we moved into a tiny 500 square foot house (with an amazing view!). Now, this was also at the height of the COVID 19 pandemic, so not only did we live there, but we also both worked there.

We would joke that we were masters of the multi-purpose room. Our living room was simultaneously a home theater, home gym, two home offices, a quilting studio, a game room, a library and a pantry all in one.

*Our main living area continues to serve many, many purposes, though some have changed over the years.

Now, if you know about quilting, you know that it takes up lots of space and requires spaces for many different tasks: ironing, cutting, sewing, ironing again, arranging, sewing, ironing again, sandwiching, quilting, binding and so forth. Our minimal space was bursting and quilting sometimes took up the whole room…

Factor #2: Broken Bones

On August 1, 2020 my husband and I got married. Exactly one week later, on August 8, 2020, I embarked on a solo roller skating journey. (As you do in the fog of relief right after your wedding at the height of a global pandemic… 2020 was weird guys...)

Approximately one hour into this endeavor (while my new husband was working his FIRST shift at a new job) I fell and I knew my arm was broken before the pain even set in.

What followed was the typical series of phone calls, an ER visit, multiple casts, surgery a few days later, wound care, getting help with everything, and so on…

It also meant that my usual handcrafts were on hold. Now, although I regained that ability to do all of my rotary cutting, ironing and hand stitching in a reasonable time, this opened the door to a craft that required slightly fewer tiny hand muscles: knitting.

You may be able to see the stars aligning. Between quilting taking up a crazy amount of space and my hands temporarily weakened, something was about to change.

Factor #3: Hand Dyed, Luxury Fibers

DISCLAIMER: I am by no means criticizing ANY yarn choices. The RIGHT yarn for you and your current project is the BEST yarn for you and your current project.

Up to this point, I had only worked with big-box store acrylic yarn. After an hour or so my hands would become itchy and irritated and I never wore any of my finished items for the same reason. I just thought this was the only choice!

I had chosen some baby-soft yarn, invested in a set of interchangeable bamboo knitting needles and took to the internet to relearn the basics. After knitting a variety of random rectangles, I managed to create a comically tiny hat and a comically oversized raglan sweater (before I even understood what raglan meant!).

Then a beautiful mix of Instagram, YouTube and a virtual Sip and Stitch group (we’re still in COVID times…) revealed to me the vast world of luxury, hand dyed fibers and I was sold. I could sense the squish through the screen and the colors and drape amazed me.

The first skein of hand-dyed, merino/nylon sock yarn that I ever bought was Birch Dyeworks 80% Superwash Merino 20% Nylon in the colorway Deep Lake and in, April 2021, I knit up my first pair of toe-up shortie socks. To this day, this is my preferred sock knitting method and my go to yarn base (along with 75/25).

There you have it, a brief retelling of my journey to knitting, the preface if you will! It was a perfect intersection of limited space, broken bones, luxury fibers (along with a bit of fiber love just running in my genes) and I literally haven’t stopped knitting since.

Thank you for indulging me by reading my story! What was your journey to knitting? If you feel so inclined, share a bit in the comments below!