A little self-knowledge is a valuable thing and I have come to the conclusion that I am not one of life’s natural knitters. Would that I were. Oh to effortlessly slip from my needles exquisite lace shawls, historically accurate river ganseys and drawers and drawers of colourful, fine-gauged socks.
I have tried to improve my knitterliness. I attended a day-course where I was, by a few hundred yarny yards, the slowest wielder of the twin pins of doom. As far as I am concerned the final dropped stitch in the very fabric of my non-knitterness came this week. I had the urge to create a scarf from these luxurious, rainbow-hued mini skeins.
I took up some needles and
Lumpy, mis-shapen and what do I know about designing a scarf for multi-coloured mini-skeins? Yet, when I pick up a hook
The first (parquet) stitch-y experiment is a success.
Warming to the theme that it is not just knit necklines that are my nemesis, I present the following:
An adored ensemble. A crocheted hat, mittens from a pattern by Made in Oxford and a scarf that literally and figuratively had me going around in circles for nearly two years.
Don’t even get me started on this attempt to merge crochet and knit and socks:
Holey heel-y moley! Heel-y holey moley?
In conclusion, whilst I continue to aspire to knitting proficiency, I fear knitterly excellence might always elude.
By the bye, would you Adam and Eve it, I’ve snuck in another #VintagePledge. The pattern that I used for my excellent hat appears in my 1981 printing of A Complete Guide to Crochet and it’s brilliant!
Here are the other eight #VintagePledge makes 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. xx
pennylibrarian 
I think you have made some lovely items – especially the scarf. And your new lacey shawl will be wonderful. I am not a good enough knitter to spot the faults. I think you really have a sensitivity for the yarn and the colours so it will all end well.
Thanks for the encouragement, there are so many knitted things that I’d like to make but I’m wary of investing much more time in something I find so tricky. If only there were as many lovely crochet jumper patterns as there are fabulous knitted jumper patterns.
I really like the look of your crochet toes and sometimes washing and blocking will help with wonky stitches and holes.
I didn’t know that blocking helped with holes as well as wonky stitches! Perhaps I should have persisted with the socks… The crochet toe did work well (I thought) but I couldn’t work out how to improve those heel wraps.
They get easier after you do them a few times too