Knitting globally: English, Continental, Norwegian, Portuguese Posted at 26 Jun 2010 10:48:44 AM

Unlike the rest of my weeks, this Saturday was very knitterly indeed. It started with Knit Morning at Borders in Brentwood, went through dropping off Georgia's christmas present at Hearthstone in south county, and up through a three-hour techniques class at Kirkwood Knittery.

I enjoyed that class very much. We learned Continental knitting (which I speak fluently), English knitting - a.k.a. "throwing" (which I did not speak at all, despite that being how I was originally taught), and progressed on through Finnish (I think?) and Norwegian purling, and ended up at Portuguese knitting.

Of them all, the Portuguese was the most surprising. I'm actually rather likely to use it when knitting something unpatterned, or ribbed (to wit: my half-finished Margot); despite looking wacky in the extreme it's amazingly fluid and uses very few movements. I wouldn't want to try a k3tbl with it, but for knit and purl it's very cool.

I also had my first attempt at trying stranded knitting using one color in each hand. My swatch looks rather dismal, and only some of it can be blamed on my 'strands' coming from the inside & outside of the same ball -- in other words, they're the same color and it looks not at all impressive from the right side. But hey - however inept it may have been, I have done it, and that means it's no longer scary!

My experiments in crochet are proceeding apace; I've produced one mushroom, which I think is rather cunning but which Dan thinks should be shorter and squatter, in order to more accurately resemble a Mario mushroom. My tension is abysmal, which is to be expected.

Beyond that, I have done exactly nothing. There is a sock in my purse only because there always is, but I haven't touched Snowflakes or TQS in weeks. I think the rush to get the last-minute shawl completed before Christmas started the burnout and the even-more-last-minute pair of office gloves put on the final touches this year. And if I have learned anything at all about my creative process, it is that there's no use in forcing it. What I am still learning is that I don't need to feel guilty about it. I'll go back to eye-crossing lace when I'm ready for it, and not before.

Expect updates sometime well after twelfth night.

Tagged as: knitting, life the universe and everything