Something I’ve noticed since becoming crafty is how much other people enjoy me being crafty. It seems bizarre to me, but in a nice way!
Crochet at the train station and strangers smile and ask what you’re working on. Leave a button and half-done sewing project on the coffee table and visitors ask about its status. Invariable it comes with a story about their grandma or how they could never finish something like that – this used to puzzle me but now I quite enjoy it.
Another side effect I’ve also noticed and like is friends who I’ve had for years pick up crafty projects with me and try new crafty things to show me. For years I didn’t even know they were crafty themselves!
So all this could be an intro for a post about how crafting can change your life and open a whole new world for you blah blah but that’s too obvious. What it is an intro for is a conspiracy.
ShandiShan and Sweetheart conspired to buy me a knitting machine for Christmas.
“A what what? But you don’t even knit! What are you supposed to do with one of those?” you cry. Well, that’s what I thought. And here is the reason for my hesitation: I don’t knit because I can’t. Not a mental oh-come-on-give-it-a-go-it’s-easy kind of can’t, more of a it-gives-me-intense-pain-in-my-right-shoulder-after-half-an-hour kind of can’t. This is thanks to an old injury which also means I can’t do things like scrub bathroom floors (‘Aww…’ you say,), paint walls and ceilings (‘Poor you.’) and play contact sports (FYI that one actually does suck.).
So you can imagine how it pleased me when I found that crochet didn’t give me the same complications.
Knowing my love for woolly things, Sweetheart gifted me the knitting machine in hope I can knit with it instead. But checking out the videos tells me it uses the kind of motion that caused the injury in the first place, so I still can’t knit…
Bah humbug.
“Oh.” Sweetheart said. “Well, you can still set it up and design things on it and I’ll do the side-side actions. We can make things together!”
And so my interest in this knitting machine contraption grows. Now to learn how to use it!
I’m well aware it’s a conspiracy so Sweetheart can have more knitted jumpers.
So far my attempts have resulted in rectangles of various sizes.
In the example below I had planned to graduate from test swatches but Sweetheart got over excited with the side to side action and broke the yarn at 221 rows. Oh wells.
Stay happy!
Xx
