h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I had to rip out my knitting.

I took up knitting again earlier this year when a foot injury meant that I couldnt run or dance, and could barely hop to the kitchen to make a cup of tea!

I started with a simple ribbed scraf in dark blue, which I pimped up with a "fringe" of assorted buttons, which clink musically when worn.

My husband asked me to knit an aran hat, which I did in a dark green fleck. He liked that so much he asked for a matching scarf, so I found an elongated cable pattern to work that in.

Some friends had given me their leftover wool stash, whcih included a self-striping grey chunky yarn. I made myself a simple shrug, but ran out of wool half way through the final rib collar. So I bought a darker grey fleck to finish it off with a contrasting border.

It's been so cold I planned to use the rest of the dark grey to make some fingerless gloves. I thought I could do them on circular needles...but then convinced myself that the tension on the wool would make them too loose.

So last night I ripped out the half a glove I'd done, and instead cast on a headband. Again, it has an aran cable pattern going through it. I like knitting aran - you can see what you're doing without having to constantly refer to a paper pattern.

I've been thinking of learning to knit, as I just generally like making stuff myself.

I also find it a hypnotic thing to watch, especially someone who's very speedy doing it.

(We were all sitting in the wee lunch hut on site the other week, and a colleague was blazing away with the needles. She wondered why I was staring, but I was entranced by the knitting, not ogling. Honest! )

As I am being spammed, I am unfriending you - you can find me in December if you want to go back to being connected.

Oh, my knitting-club colleagues tend to stare at me too.
Being left-handed, I have a strange way of knitting, apparently.

It looks a bit like this :



Now, what *is* Aran, again ?

I think Malabarista has got the wrong end of the stick - she chose to subscribe to our journals, and if she now chooses to unsubscribe from them, we won't be at the loss, she will. She will have to make the effort to re-subscribe to the ones she is interested in.

I find that I get a *lot* more conversations listed than I used to. I would like to be polite and reply to every one, but I'm running out of time.

I hope no one will feel insulted if I don't get to their journals. It's not spam, as far as I can tell, just people trying to rise to a very demanding occasion.

To be honest h2g2 has been so quiet over the past year that it isn't causing any more traffic than there used to be in a normal, non-jo-po month.

This level of posting would once have been considered just average.

[Amy P]

I'm also not sure I'll be able to keep up - but I'm doing my best (for those doing a different thread each day I'll probably unsub, for those with one thread I'll leave a as much as I can

but I have an essay due on 4th december which means that... towards the end of Nov I'll be replying to everyone... er, I mean concentrating on my essay

I don't feel a need to read every single nano journal. If I have some spare time, it is GReAT to have all this material to dip in to, and it makes a real change to log on to Hootoo and have some fresh content and interaction. I don't expect everyone to read all mine either, and if they are too busy or feel that its clogging up their inbox, then of course they can deal with that how they choose.

I think it's lovely to see My Conversations moving so fast

The My Conversations tab that we have on Pliny means it's very easy to unsub from a single journal if it no longer interests you. I'm trying to read as many as I can, but often don't reply unless I have a comment I think the journal owner will find interesting.

I enjoy knitting, too. I don't know what I look like when I do knit, as I am left handed too, but I learned the right handed way sort of, so I don't hold the needles and wool the way my gran was taught at school, for example, but equally I don't knit like my left-handed great-grandmother either.

I'm very impressed that you find Aran easy - I pore over the pattern, and still have a tendency to make mistakes if I lose concentration... I like knitting small toys best, even though they are fiddly to sew up as they can be knitted quite quickly while I watch tv at the same time

I wonder... when I (mostly right-handed) knit, I move the stitches (as everyone else does) from the left (static) needle onto the right needle (the one that does all the work) then swap. the yarn is hooked over the fingers of my left hand.

Probably if you reversed that and had the left hand needle as the active one, and hooked the yarn over your right hand, that would work? (although for things like V-necked jumpers you'd have to reverse all the instructions when decreasing for the V - wouldn't you? )

Sorry to hear you had to rip out. I've been knitting (slowly) for several years now. Would you tell me what you mean by "aran"? I haven't seen that word used that way in the US. Here I think the word is used to refer to yarn weight, but even then you don't see it that often. We need a knitting smiley.

works for me!

Aran to me is all worked in one colour, but with patterns like cables, twists and blackberry stich. Aran sweaters are the classic garb of folk singers, but there is a whole history and meaning to the different patterns.

I once made a sweater which had a sheaf of corn cabled on the front-that was fun! And I've recently been intrigued by a sampler sweater, with sections made of differing stitches.

The only part of me that is able to knit is my bones when they are broken, which is [fortunately] very rare.

"I wonder... when I (mostly right-handed) knit, I move the stitches (as everyone else does) from the left (static) needle onto the right needle (the one that does all the work) then swap. the yarn is hooked over the fingers of my left hand.

Probably if you reversed that and had the left hand needle as the active one, and hooked the yarn over your right hand, that would work? (although for things like V-necked jumpers you'd have to reverse all the instructions when decreasing for the V - wouldn't you? headhurts )"

I pondered this yesterday

I found that I actually knit two-handed - my right hand puts the needle in the stitch and the wool over the needle, then my left hand pulls the stitch over the wool and off the needle. Therefore, for me it is like playing the piano or playing a guitar - both hands are required, so there's no advantage for me in reversing things so my dominant(ish) left hand does the part that other people's dominant right hand does.

However, I did contemplate what would happen if someone was knitting left handed, so the stitches would move from right to left instead of left to right. You wouldn't need to alter the pattern in any way, as the finished knitting would just be a mirror image - knitting two together (say) would still have the same effect.

Fascinating!

If someone with a left-hand-knit jumper hugged someone with a right-hand-knit jumper, would they annihilate?