Playing with string

[jennythereader]

Anyone out there want to teach me how to knit? Or crochet? Or both? (Yeah, like I don't do enough crafts already...)

Comments

[txanne.livejournal.com]

http://www.ravelry.com

http://www.knittinghelp.com

[jennythe-reader.livejournal.com]

I'll check out the tutorials on those sites, but I was really hoping that one of my local friends would volunteer to walk me through the process. :)

It's the sort of skill I have a hard time learning from pictures.

[txanne.livejournal.com]

I haven't looked at knittinghelp lately, but I'm pretty sure it used to have videos. YouTube has lots, too. Ravelry is like Facebook for knitters, except without the creepy privacy violations.

[jennythe-reader.livejournal.com]

I haven't tried learning from a video yet. That might work better than a book did.

It's rare that I run into something I can't teach myself out of a book, and I find it very disconcerting when I do.

[txanne.livejournal.com]

Knitting's a weird mix of visual and spatial, for me. I tried learning from a righty, and then from her books, but I ended up reading the instructions out loud while reversing the words "left" and "right." Then I did what I heard instead of what I saw. I think Athena must have been with me that day!

[jennythe-reader.livejournal.com]

The problem I had the one time I tried to learn it from a book was that I could not translate the 2-dimensional pictures into my 3-dimensional hands. The things that were explained well in words, I got, but the stuff that needed the pictures... not so much.

[txanne.livejournal.com]

Yeah, you may have a similar visual/spatial mix going. Oh, brains, we loves them and we hates them.

[jennythe-reader.livejournal.com]

In this case, I think part of the problem was the particular book I was trying to use. The pictures were all black and white line drawings, where it was sometimes hard to tell which bit was supposed to be the needle and which the yarn. I sort of let it discourage me from trying other books, which may have been a mistake.

[stefka.livejournal.com]

I know there's a knitting group that meets over your way on a fairly regular basis, and anybody there would be able to show you the basics. Heck, *I* could show you the basics, but I am not conveniently located.

[jennythe-reader.livejournal.com]

Will you be at Roses? I could almost certainly find the time then.

[stefka.livejournal.com]

Yup! If you haven't had a better -or faster!- offer by then, I'd be delighted.

[jennythe-reader.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a plan. Any particular type of needles and/or yarn you recommend I acquire between now and then? I know I bought stuff last time I tried to learn, but I couldn't tell you what happened to them if my life depended on it.