I’m Getting Back Into Knitting

I was a very heavy knitter back in the day. I used to knit in front of the television, I’d knit while talking to friends. I’ve even brought my knitting to the movies. I have probably dozens of knitting books. 28. I just counted them.* I also subscribed to Vogue Knitting for years** and I used to pore over women’s magazines in the checkout line looking for knitting patterns and if I liked the pattern I’d buy the magazine, cut out the pattern and put them in one of those sticky photo album pages. Then there were the patterns I downloaded from places like the Berroco and Lion Brand yarn companies’ website.

I’m not sure why I stopped knitting. Moving to Texas didn’t help. I need a severely limited number of warm sweaters down here. I have so much yarn that would make beautiful sweaters and no sweaters to make.

Years ago I found Project Linus, a charity where people make blankets to be given to preemies or to children who have suffered losses or trauma, and so I started knitting blankets for them. I kept knitting blankets for several more years, even though I no longer knew how to get them to the charity.

Then. Hm. I think I decided that I wanted to make sweaters for Mila and all of her foster sisters, but I couldn’t get motivated.

I know one of the things that happened to stop me knitting. Well, first, I stopped watching TV. So there’s that. Also my dad stopped parachuting. I used to knit all the way to and from the jump site.

Well, on Christmas, my dad and I were watching It’s a Wonderful Life and I decided to dig out the Project Linus blankets I was working on. Turns out I was almost done with one of them — a pink, blue, and purple one that was a larger version of a blue, yellow, and green one I did a few years back and that looked almost like a plaid. It doesn’t look so plaid-y when it’s larger, but the blanket is still pretty.

Then I found one that I was working on based on the trapped-bar pattern scarves from the Harry Potter movies (the ones that they unveiled in Prisoner of Azkaban). I couldn’t find the rest of the yarn for it, though, so I unraveled it and will start it over on a slightly smaller scale.

I also saw a commercial for a knit weighted blanket and I was playing around with ideas for that for a while. I weigh about 125, which means that the standard adult weighted blankets, at 15 pounds, are way too heavy for me. Since cotton yarn feels pretty heavy, I dug out some Lion Brand CottonEase and am now playing around with it. I’m working a strand of yellow and a strand of, like, turquoise and will see how that works out. If it’s too light or too small, maybe I’ll put it in my container for Project Linus.

Recently I’ve gotten pretty heavily into several YouTube channels and also some Amazon Prime series, so I figured it’s not television, but it’s pretty close, so I’ve been knitting in front of them. Speaking of YouTube channels, I need to see where I am in my Content Creators series.

I went through my yarns years ago and sorted them by color, but that was undone ages ago and so I think I need to go through them again.

For today’s Germane Amazon Link, I bring you the source of some of my favorite patterns, as well as the book that had me take my first stab at knitting sweaters all in one piece, which is now how I knit, well, pretty much everything I can knit in one piece: Fishermen’s Sweaters: Twenty Exclusive Knitwear Designs for All Generations, by Alice Starmore.

*29. I forgot the dog knitting pattern book I have in Kindle format.

**I was considering seeing if I could make Vogue Knitting magazine my Germane Amazon Link, but apparently Vogue Knitting is not available for Kindle. Hm.***

***Oh! Vogue Knitting has its own app! Would it let me access back issues? I’d love to be able to access back issues. I love my old magazines, but they’re awfully dusty.

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