How far down the road to learning your craft do you believe yourself to be?

From no knowledge to being able to teach others to knit and loving every stitch, every needle, every skein of yarn along the way.

I learned to crochet from my mother as a child, while watching her make a traditional granny square afghan, bright colors with black. I never really made anything, I could just do the stitches.
I made a shell stitch scarf for my husband when we were first married. Later a couple of large single granny square afghans, I don’t like to stitch little squares together. I tried afghan stitch making an afghan and adding cross-stitched pattern. for my girls I crocheted open-work ponchos.
I always wanted to learn to knit. I found an ‘I can learn to knit’ book, so step by step and picture by picture I learned the basics, English style.
I had seen Continental style and that was the way I wanted to knit. I didn’t know what the styles were called. I talked with an older knitter friend, and she showed me how to start. So I just kind of put together a way to knit — leaving me knitting with twisted stitches. I didn’t know that either.
I made a hooded poncho and a sweater, a baby sack …sock hats with long skinny ends. We called them elephant hats, because when you bent over the hat tails fell down looking like elephant trunks.
THEN………I started reading (collecting) knitting books,and all kinds of needles, wood, bamboo, metal, plastic, glass, round, square, straights, double pointed and circulars and Y A R N!

I began reading, following the pictures, and step by step perfecting the little I knew.

I mainly used a yarn like Lion’s Homespun. I was afraid of my stitches, afraid I was doing them wrong, afraid of what they looked like. I kept on knitting. I don’t know how many round afghans I knitted from Homespun.

If someone would ask me ‘do you knit?,’
I would always say, oh kind of, or just a little; always comparing myself with other knitters. Then one day I realized, I KNIT! Not as good as some, not as competent as others, but I knitted the best I could.

My mom bought me this book and I began to work my way through it. Some patterns I couldn’t figure out because of my twisted stitches. I have a bag full of 4×4 inch squares of samples. Now I use the pattern book to make washcloths, still trying new patterns.

I learned how to knit without twisting, how the stitches sit on the needles and what it means, and how to pick up drop stitches.
I have tried and love knitting lace and have made 6 shawls. I’ve made soxs.

Most times I have either a Wallaby or a Zimmermann’s baby surprise jacket on my needles.

Oh…..and I LOVE stitch definition.

Knitting,  being able to read the stitches, listening to the rhythm of the needles is like another language.  I’ve become bi-lingual!