My mother-in-law and I are embarking on a voyage of yarnie blogdom…
She, Susan Campbell, is an enormously accomplished knitter, designer, artist of many years standing, and I am a relative ingenu.
She plans to pass on her pearls of wisdom to me, since I am in awe and unbridled envy of her skill and accomplishment, and love nothing more than to spend the day knitting, crocheting, sewing… Life gets in the way a little too much for my liking, though 😉
Knitting, for me, began when I was 10 and my grandmother taught me the basics. She took me to a little shop in Weybridge, Surrey, where we chose a pattern and some blue, fluffy yarn and I promised her faithfully that I would finish it. A short while ago I came across a bag with the completed front in it, some 30 years later, and felt a pang of guilt.
Then, enter my mother-in-law. She got me going again. She, like my grandmother, took me to a shop – this time in King’s Lynn, Norfolk – and we chose some cream-coloured yarn. She taught me to follow a pattern again, and I made a tea-cozy. Which struck me as rather hat-shaped. So I recreated it without the holes for handle and spout, and put a little sprout on the top, and started knitting hats, for babies, for my family, for friends, and for sale.
It’s a short step from there to attempting larger projects, though I became side-tracked by crochet along the way…
So now, I have half a million projects on the go. I have nearly finished a knitted elephant for one son, have completed a tank top for another, a pair of aran socks for a dear friend, a new baby hat for a relative, a cowl for a friend… and am crocheting a long waistcoat of granny squares, a blanket of granny hexagons, knitting a baby hoodie for a friend’s baby, but my mind is teeming with more ideas and balking at not having enough time to do it all.
Oh, and tomorrow I go to collect my latest acquisition – a spinning wheel – about which I know next-to-nothing and am ridiculously excited.
Pictures and details to follow.
Off to put littl’uns to bed… I’ll leave you with some works in progress:
Alice's Adventures in Knittingland 
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