Why do I love knitting?
I love all the beautiful colours in which yarns come. Sometimes when I am walking around the yarn warehouse surrounded by thousands of balls of yarn of various colours and fibres it is just the colours of the yarn that call out to me. Diamond yarn has a 100% silk lace weight yarn that the first time I saw it sitting on the warehouse shelf I knew I had to have it just for the colour. It was a multicoloured blue, yellow and black that was just so striking. I didn’t know what I would do with it but I needed to have that yarn. Luckily many of my customers agreed with me but I bet most of them had an idea what they would do with it when they bought it. I don’t need to know what I am going to do with I just need to have that colour.
I love all the different fibres that you can get. The Debbie Bliss Alpaca Silk Aran (unfortunately now discontinued, but we still have some in the store) is just so soft that I had to make something out of it. It was the one when people asked for the softest yarn that I directed them to. Right now the Madeline Tosh sock for it’s colours and softness is one of my favourite yarns. It is 100% merino with a nice twist.
I love that sock yarn knits up magically into a pattern. Sometimes you just have to keep knitting to see what will come up next. People who don’t knit think you are so talented when it is really the yarn dyers who are so talented.
I love the click and feel of the needles as the yarn slides along them. A great pair of needles is essential to my knitting enjoyment. The yarn has to move quickly and smoothly, no pushing or bunching allowed. My needle of choice at the moment are Hiya Hiya circulars even when I am not knitting in the round. I like the short needle length that you get with a circular and that you can scrunch everything up onto the cable when you want to put your project in a bag and not worry about the stitches falling off.
I love working on a pattern and seeing it slowly take shape. I usually am impatient to finish the project so I can see how it will look but I often stop and just look and feel the item I am working on and think this all started as a ball of yarn and now look at it. It seems almost magical the way the yarn twists and turns to make all the stitches in a pattern.
I also love that knitting requires you to sit down and just be.