Years ago an acquaintance gave me an unused set of Boye circular knitting needles. She knew I crocheted and thought maybe I'd have a use for them. I took them despite not having any interest in knitting.
In 2023 I was looking for an arm warmer pattern. Although there were many cute crochet patterns available, the ones I was most drawn to were the knit versions. I had also become a huge fan of Outlander on Netflix and loved the fingerless gloves and arm warmers worn on the show. I decided to look for patterns similar to those. That's when I discovered the Handy Little Me website. This website contains many free patterns both crochet and knit. They also feature Outlander patterns! The one that caught my eye was a knit pattern called, "Geillis Fingerless Gloves Pattern." Naturally they were a knit pattern. After much thought I decided to dig out that circular knitting kit and teach myself how to knit!
One of the first things I had to decide was what style I would knit in. That wasn't too difficult of a decision. Since I already crocheted, the continental style of knitting felt very intuitive to me.
YouTube was an immense help to me. I spent a good deal of time learning to cast on, what form of cast on I needed ( or preferred ) and how to knit in the round using the magic loop technique. There are so many wonderful knit YouTube creators out there who do a beautiful job showing you step by step what you need to do. I am grateful to them all!
It's normally strongly suggest when learning to knit you start with nice simple patterns, but I tend to dive straight into the deep end! My first knitting project would be fingerless gloves that included cables!
Surprisingly I muddled through and ended up with one of my favorite pair of arm warmers! They turned out better than I could have imagined. Which sent me on a quest to find more things to knit for my wardrobe!
Yes, this onetime crochet only girl had fallen in love with knitting! I guess you could say learning to knit added more arrows to my quiver!
Until next time,