Just don't call me backwards.....

I am left-handed, and so have a few difficulties to overcome when I knit lace. (I knit from right to left i.e my knitting piece is held in my right hand and I use the left hand to create the new stitch) A lace chart means I must mirror image the chart, and change the symbol meanings. For left and right decreases for a regular knitter the symbol for a k2tog is / which is the way they are knitting (from left to right) I on the other hand am knitting from the opposite direction and if I want the decrease to lean the same way I would knit a sl1,k1, psso this would create the same stitch as for a regular knitter. (if I was to knit the k2tog as stated in the pattern my stitch would come out as \) I have also discovered that knitting 2tog thru the back loop will also create a stitch going in the same direction as if I knitted thru the front loop which makes it a hell of a lot easier when doing the k2togs!

Why am I telling you this, because I'm tired as being told I'm a lost cause cause I knit "backward" I read the same way I knit, in fact a page is laid out like I knit you read it left to right not right to left I'm tired of prospective knitters being told they must learn to knit this way, chances are people who are told that won't take up knitting as a recreation.

In order to cater to the "backwards" knitter as far as I can see, it would take a chart mirror- imaged and the decrease and increase symbols swapped but apparently publishers don't know how to edit (the obvious question I have is what the $%^&* are they doing publishing then!!!!)
Whilst it may have been difficult in the past to cater for "backward" knitters, in the computer day and age it seems ludicrous that left-handers are not catered for and that information for the left-handers is scarce, I have seen several videos of people knitting backward and there is a lot of mis-information, no "experts"for the lefties. There is information for reverse knitting (which is knitting left and right handed this has the effect of not having to purl as in circular knitting)
I have attempted to knit right-handed and I can do it verrrry slooowly but contorting my right hand into the positions that are required for knitting right handed are more pain than my fingers can bear).
I don't class myself as an expert, heavens there's a lot I don' know still about knitting but my difficulty is increased when I have to stop and interpret patterns to suit my left-handedness and I am paying the same price for my patterns as right handers shouldn't my needs be catered for in the same way?

So just who is backward me...... or the publishers?

Living in the Bush

I live in the hills of Melbourne in an area classed as the Dandenong Ranges. The landscape of this area is mostly bush, with houses scattered throughout the hills, its a beautiful place to live with lots of wildlife and at night its a very dark place to be.

The drawbacks of living in such an area are few, if you are without transport (like me) you are stuck without much face to face contact with humans and most of your communication is with the telephone or the internet.

Mostly Im quite happy and content with this, as it allows me to concentrate on what I like doing, which is knitting, but I do take breaks from this and enjoy the beautiful scenery around me.

This morning I was walking around my front garden and came across a wallaby. Now this wallaby had obviously tried to cross the road in front of my property, and had (I think) been hit by a car, it had managed to jump a few more feet but had died once it got into my garden.

Now being new at country living, I didnt know what to do, so rang my next door neighbor (ringing my neighbor is a lot quicker than going to see her) and asked what do I do? Maria my neighbor suggested that I ring the wildlife rescue people and see if they would help.

I rang the wildlife people, and the conversation sort of went like this

Me: I have a dead wallaby in my yard what should I do?

them: is it a male or female?

Me: How do I tell if its male or female?

Them: Lift its leg and look, if there are testicles its a male if none its a female. (well duh!)

Me: But its dead what difference does it make if its male or female?

Them: If its female there may be a joey in its pouch, if you see no testicles look for the pouch and see if theres a joey in the pouch......we may be able to save the joey.

Me: you want me to stick my hand into a dead animal to see if theres a baby?

them: Yes

Now I won't go into details, but needless to say it was a female and I dry retched for an hour after I did as I was requested. If I could have boiled my hand to get the germs off I would have. I didnt find any way of diposing of the animal apart from digging a big hole myself and dragging the poor wallaby into it. Well the deed has been done lets hope she now rests in peace.

An Old Dog and New Tricks

After my gob smacking, soul destroying discovery yesterday, I quickly evaluated my situation. Should I give up knitting altogether and direct my attention to other hobbies? Should I delete all the projects of my knitting online so others cannot see the glaring problem that I so blissfully ignored? The conclusion I came to was no...my work isn't that bad, sure it has a slight twist but 20 years of knitting and all I had in comments have been nice about the twist that appears within my knitted pieces I haven't had a negative comment at all, so they will stay.

Last night I got back on the horse that threw me and began some practise swatches. Some observations I have about stitch that I'm re-learning, the tension is better in my knitting, my stitches are more even and better defined, and the stitch is just as easy as knitting thru the back, though I do have to watch myself as mindless as swatch knitting is sometimes when your attention is not on your knitting you tend to slip back into bad habits. They say it takes three weeks to form a bad habit, I wonder how long it will be before I break this 20year old bad habit.

Oh Magoo you've done it again

Did you ever see the cartoon of Mr Magoo? Mr Magoo was a bumbling man with very poor eyesight who kept getting things wrong due to such eyesight. At the end of every cartoon he would say to himself Oh Magoo you've done it again. Well that's how I feel. As I have mentioned before, I taught myself to knit and have continued on from there. Now as I broaden my horizons I have started learning different methods of doing things and exploring some of the techniques that I see and hear about on the Internet.
This morning, I decided to investigate the leaning stitches that are produced when you do the two different types i.e K2tog and the sl1 K1 method I had used this method in a number of items and was puzzled because both those stitches when I did them didn't look any different at all -why was this so? Was being a left-handed knitter the reason?
Suddenly the light bulb came on! I always knit into the back of the stitch! I don't knit into the front! So in the great words of that American Icon Homer Simpson

DOH!

Now you might want to try this for yourself to see, but if you knit thru the back like I do/did this has the same effect for a sl1k1, k2tog, it also has the effect of "twisting" the stitch, I thought as did my mother that was because I was left handed, now a swatch later knitting thru the front and doing the k2tog, sl1k1, I can see how this works......

The Mystery Spinning Wheel

I got this given to me about 3 months ago, straight away I sent an email to a friend of mine, spinning lilac for advice on the wheel.

Spinning lilac, told me the machine was probably dry and to clean off all the dust that had accumulated and to give it some linseed oil and polish off with some beeswax. I followed her advice and the result is the lovely wheel you see here. But the mystery remains, although I have scoured the Internet far and wide I cannot find out what it is called, or who the manufacturer is. I have seen one before, er before I got this one but I never got a chance to ask about it now I wish I had, I think its used mainly for chunky yarns or country yarns but I'm not sure, I am waiting to visit a friend who will show me how to use it, I have a rough idea but want an expert to show me how to do it properly

Organization

I decided to go through my yarn stash in the hope of being able to catergorize it into the different plys and I started gathering (yes my stash is all over the house) the lace weight yarn I had in order to do a couple of mystery stole knitalongs starting very soon. My lace stash is looking very small whereas my DK weight yarn fills approx 12 plastic tubs. My excuse for the amount of DK weight yarn is that most of the yarn was on sale and magpie that I am I just could not resist and I will use it one day. Sadly though my lace stash needs an immediate injection of company, wonder if it would like some Bendigo 2ply for company.......?

Valuable Resource - The knitting Community

When I first started surfing the net, one of my first encounters with the knitting community was thru a newsgroup called rcty. Members of this newsgroup lived in various communities across the world and posted comments and helpful advice to people with knitting dilemmas, all advice was given freely and sometimes quite humourously. Socks were often a hot topic, and I was a little surprised to see how much sock knitting was going on. I had never used dpns although I knew what they were (having some in my knitting needle collection) I had never understood their use and felt I had enough trouble with using two never mind three or four at a time.
But all this talk of sock knitting got me curious, and I decided to give it a try.
I googled sock knitting and found several sites that could help me and sat down to try. Within two hours of my first picking up dpns I was knitting my first sock WOO HOO.
Since then my knitting skills have increased further, and I am no longer afraid of dpns, and Im all for exploring the world of knitting, in the future after I have finished my lace love affair, I intend to explore the world of illusion knitting, and journey to the far galaxy's of instaria, and fair isle, with a few pitstops into knitting KALS and groups, I know that I will meet and befreind all types of people and Im really looking forward to it.

Oh no not another knitting blog

Yes, if your asking it is another knitters blog, about the trials and errors of a left handed knitter in a right handed world.

I first started crocheting whilst I was a girl, being left handed meant that it was impossible for my right handed mother to teach me. We did try, with mirrors but I kept watching her hands rather than the mirror and it only confused me further still.

Determined not to let this stop me, I used my second greatest love, to help me which is reading. I found a left handed instruction book from the library and studied it with great zeal, in the end I had the rudiments down and I was on my way.

For years, I knitted jumpers, scarves and blankets, never giving much thought to what I was doing, just pleased I was able to create something out of yarn. But as time went on I found myself inexplicably drawn to yarn, I found myself unable to walk past yarn shops without going in and buying on impulse, yarn that seemed to talk to me and call out to me "knit me, make me into something beautiful"

As a result of this I ended up with a yarn stash with packets of wool stashed away awaiting that perfect project that would give life to the beautiful yarn and start its life as a piece of wearable art.

Well that was the plan, but at the moment I have a fixation and its hard to shake and the fixation is lace not just any lace but the lace you get in stoles and wraps and such. This fixation has lasted for the last year and at the moment I cannot see an end to it cause I love lace, so the stash is going to have to wait (I would like to remind the stash that good things come to those that wait- so please stop shouting at me)