Downeast Knitiodts

The Wednesday morning meeting of the Downeast Knitiodts, (the moniker we have dubbed our little knitting group), met at one of our member's homes for a jolly good session of knitting lessons, chin wagging and some delicious apple brownies baked by our gracious hostess, Nancy.


Instructor, Barbara, certainly earned her money on this day as we all had questions about our projects and needed lots of guidance with some of the new patterns and projects we had in progress.
Judy needed her attention more than the rest of us as she was attempting to knit with 4 needles for the very first time. We all gave her much encouragement and reassured her that we had all been there, and the hardest part was that very first round, the rest of the sock being a piece of cake (right, wink, wink). We all chortled under our breath, knowing full well that the first pair of socks was a real pain to master, but once mastered, all the rest were easy (another myth spread by sadistic knitters).


My project for this session was to sew the first sleeve onto H's sweater. Barbara painstakingly showed me how to pin the sleeve on and, sewing on the right side, make a perfect seam. Now, I was always taught to seam things with right sides together and this was an all too foreign experience for me. I had to pay close attention to what I was doing. However, I did manage to get the hang of it despite my brain screaming "NO! This is not the way you're supposed to be doing it!"

The second sleeve is making progress after having been completely torn out because I made a huge mistake early on. I knew I would not be able to see H in his sweater if I knew the mistake was there, sooooo, out came the many hours of knitting and a new beginning was made.

My other current project is a new learning experience. While I have made socks in the past, watching Carmen make the beautiful patterned socks she knits gave me the desire to try my hand at yet something else new. BIG MISTAKE! I cannot tell you how I have slaved over this sock. The pattern is beautiful, but my word, the yarn is fingering yarn (very thin) and the needles are size 2. I can hardly see the darned stitches and my hands are so cramped around the tiny needles that I only knit for a few minutes at a time. The person who gets these for Christmas had better be darned grateful!