My biggest accomplishment in my knitting means absolutely nothing to any of my family or friends. None of them knit. Well my Mom knits and purls enough to make a sweater and my friend, Amanda, is the master of the single crochet. But no one I know is as obsessed as I am. The other day I called my Mom just to share my big news. And nothing. She didn't know what the Continental Method was. She had no idea of the new blazing speeds my needles could now travel at. I tried to explain over the phone:
"Well instead of holding the yarn in your right hand and then wrapping it around the needle, you hold it in your left and kinda hook it with the needle and pull it through."
Silence.
I had seen it done by a lady on TV one day and was amazed by how fast she could knit. I had tried it a few times in the past but it felt like I was knitting left handed. Awkward and not relaxing at all. But I vowed to learn. I was working on a scarf with lots of ribbing and I absoultely hated ribbing. Loathed it in fact. I don't remember why but I swore I was going to knit the whole rest of the scarf using only the Continental Method and that's exactly what I did.
At first it felt odd and frustrating. It reminded me of keyboarding class when you were forced to learn the proper way to type. But like taking a keyboarding class, after months of painfull aaaa-ssss-dddd-ffff excercises, you finally feel liberated and free to type without hovering over the keyboard doing the two-fingered-peck.
Now I knit ribbing as fast as I would knit or purl a whole row. I don't drop my needle pulling my yarn to the front or the back anymore because I don't have to let go of either needle. Life is grand. I'm estatic. I want to scream my excitement from the rooftops but all I get is silence from my Mom.
So I'll share my big news with you and hope that it is met with more than silence.
