I always enjoyed knitting - it's therapeutic, creative, and can be fairly mindless, allowing you to listen, chat, or watch something at the same time. I was first taught to knit by my mum when I was 4 or 5 years old, so that by the time I was 12, I was knitting my own fair isle and aran jumpers. At the age of 14, I learned hand-spinning, and at 16 got my own spinning wheel and started creating my own yarns to hand-dye and then knit. I carried on knitting and spinning regularly until I was about 30, and then for some reason stopped. Wool shops were closing, and getting hold of beatiful wools and knitting patterns had got harder (with the notable exception of Rowan). I finally sold my spinning wheel about 10 years ago and it's a long time since I did any knitting. But knitting has become fashionable again, wool shops are opening everywhere and there are now gorgeous wools and patterns being created. So I have been tempted to dust off my knitting needles once more.
The reason behind it all - I came across a pattern for a gorgeous cardigan on ravelry.com, via another site, so I found a suitable yarn (a gorgeous pure wool/lambswool mix - the photograph doesn't do it justice), and I'm now ready to get going again. The last piece of knitting which I started (a shawl for my expected baby) was never finished, and still sits reproachfully in my knitting bag, stuffed in a cupboard - maybe I'll use the wool for something else now. The cardigan I'm about to knit is a large snuggly one, so there's a huge pile of wool, and goodness knows how long it'll take me to knit, so lets hope the enthusiasm lasts!
