In Which Soupygirl Gives a Guerrilla Knitting Lesson

It’s funny how time slips away.  It seems like I only recently made my last post, but then I look and see that it was back in January.  Alas.

This whole knitting obsession has officially spun out of control.  My mom and I were consignment shopping while she was here.  We left the Sparkle Girl at home with her Daddy.  While we were waiting for Bella Stella (at about 28th and NE Broadway) to open we hit the coffee shop just down the street.  There was a young woman knitting by herself at a table.  I’m always drawn to people knitting in public and want to talk with them about their project, their yarn, etc.  I noticed that she was knitting without using tension.  This is a technique for holding the working yarn in the hand so that it flows smoothly and evenly.  It’s much easier on the hands than picking up the strand to make a stitch every time.  It’s faster and the knitting looks much better, the stitches are more consistent.

I wrestled with myself for a few minutes.  Do foist myself on her to show her how to use tension?  Do I leave her alone and let her seek out the knowledge she wants at her own pace?  Finally, the knitting teacher in me won out.   She had mentioned that she was a new knitter and that her stitches weren’t even.  She had ripped the project back and was starting over.  I asked if she knew about tension and if she wanted to learn.  Poor thing was very gracious and accepted the guerrilla knitting lesson well.  She got the hang of it pretty easily and I helped her as she practiced.  Eventually she ripped out her knitting to “start it all over right”.  Good Girl!  My Mom jumped in and told her about my blog…. if you are reading this I hope you didn’t mind my foisting knowledge on you too much~

It’s so hard not to jump in when you know that you can help propel a nascent knitter up to the next level.  That impulse to help is so hard to resist.  But sometimes you just have to.  I try to read people’s body language and energy.  She was chatty, which made it easier to strike up a conversation.  She was a new knitter, which made it more likely that she would be open to some instruction.  If she had been knitting that way for a long time she probably wouldn’t be excited about some stranger butting into her technique.  I asked her first if she’d like me to show her something.  Her response was positive and open.  If she kind of grudgingly said, “sure, I guess.”  Then I would have cut it short and left her alone.   She seemed glad to learn a new skill that would help improve her knitting and keep her from getting a repetitive motion injury.

So, I made a neckwarmer as a birthday present for our fabulous coffee lady/baby sitter.  She is such a positive woman, gorgeous, and she loves my baby.  For her birthday I made her a gorgeous baby blue and camel neckwarmer (camel on top and bottom, blue in the middle).  I found the yarn on sale at Close Knit… 60% off silk and cashmere.  I knew when I saw it that it was destined for Leslie. It looked gorgeous on her with her blond hair and blue eyes.  She says she’ll wear it skiing!  Of course, I forgot to take a picture of it.  DANG!

It is the Ridged Lace Cowl from Elinor Brown found on her www.exercisebeforeknitting.com blog. The pattern knit up easily and it was pretty easy to make adjustments for gauge.   I did 9 repeats around instead of 11 and worked the pattern probably 5 times instead of 7.  I put it on and it was nice and soft and warm.

Next up:  booties for a colleague of my husband who just had a baby girl.  Also still have the inherited sweater project and my vest.