The K1P1 Virus

So, as predicted, I didn't go out last night. Instead, we had a takeaway pizza (dang those non-Jalapeno wusses that are my female relatives) and changed into our jammies; since my sister was involved, we drank alcopops rather than wine, but hey, I'm not too fussy where alcohol is concerned.

I found myself sitting next to Rebecca, the niece who'd said she wanted to learn to knit; stealthily I found a remnant ball of yarn, and handed it to her with a pair of 4mm needles. I showed her how to cast on, andthen how to knit; I said I'd show her how to purl when she told me she was happy with knitting. However, Rebecca is a southpaw, and I think this is why she has an interesting way of adding accidental extra stitches - winding the yarn to create a stitch anti-clockwise goes against how she'd naturally do it, and somehow she is yarn forwarding sometimes, thus creating the extra stitches.


Then my niece Annie came in from playing Crash Bandicoot on the PS2; she sat in the corner of the sofa watching her sister knit. So I sneaked out a second remnant ball of yarn, plus another set of 4mm needles. I showed her how to cast on and knit; then after a few rows of garter stitch, how to purl. That's it, she was off and away, quite comfortable with her new skills.

My sister came in. I chucked her yet another remnant ball, plus a set of .... you guessed it... 4mm needles. She cast on. I looked at her stitches, and asked her how she'd done it. She showed me - she was knitting through the back loop, which was making all her stitches slant to the right. In spite of my insistence that that was fine, as long as it looks like knitting at the end it doesn't matter how you do it, she asked me to show her how I got upright stitches, so I did. She was very happy with the result, and has completed a good 3 inches of ribbing, and about 4 of stocking stitch ... it's intended to be a scarf for her dog Charlie. He's a scarf-wearing kinda dawgie.



















However, middle niece Serena was unpersuadable. She'd rather go do something 'dramatic'. I think she watched 'The Nightmare Before Christmas' with my kids.

DD was also missing, as at the age of 6 1/2, she is not allowed to drink vodka, which my sister apparently thinks is a necessary part of the knitting package. Who am I to disagree ?

So they are all in town now at Franklins, buying 4 mm knitting needles. And pretty yarn. No doubt my father will receive more emails like mine, begging for nice, inexpensive American yarns like Bernat, for the next time he's in Tenessee and fancies a 50 mile trip to Memphis to Jo-ann's.

As an infection vector for the K1P1 Virus, I believe my job here is done.

cropped for shy people

This is supposed to be a WYSIWYG platform, so why am I having issues with formatting ??