Recipe for …………KNITTING?

1. Take four knitting needles

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2.Choose some pretty wool

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. Choose A pattern

 

4. Mix together and -  panic! It must be 30+ years since I last knitted anything. I loved knitting little bonnets and matinee jackets (umm, why matinee?? Makes no sense to me –do you know?)

Matinee is used to describe a theatrical performance - or a movie showing - that takes place in the daytime, usually the afternoon, confusingly enough. Why confusingly? The word is actually French, matinée, meaning morning rather than afternoon, but morning in the sense of a time period with a definite duration, as compared to the French "matin", meaning "morning" in a more general sense. The French often do this with words describing time when they want to add an implication of duration, cf. jour and journée (day and whole day long), also soir and soirée (evening and an evening party that lasts some time).

I would guess therefore that a matinee jacket is an item of clothing designed to dress the baby in once you've got it out of its cot, maybe to keep it warm - infant day-wear, if you like.

Back to the knitting ………

Anyway, I did enjoy making these for Emma as a baby and she did look so cute.

Here is Phe modelling a loopy bonnet and eating an apple!

 

 

But, back to today. Casting on – do I remember how to do it? Of course, easy peasy just go in between the stitches on the needle to create another. OK that’s done – how many stitches have I got it should be 53. Five minutes later I had between 48 and 55 – different each count. I was going bonkers – I can count, honest I can, I went to Grammar School but these stitches had me beat. The problem is that there are several threads making up the wool and it splits so it is very difficult even after a a cataract operation to decide what is & what isn’t a stitch.

O well. I will start the rib then I will know if I start & end on a plain there are at least an odd number. Guess what? Started on a knit and ended on a purl – so yet another recount – this was worse than a by-election.

I decided one stitch wasn’t going to make much difference so I ploughed on – Knit one, purl one to the end of the row. Then back again – looked OK there appeared to be the beginnings of a rib

but……………. it was supposed to be moss stitch. GRRRR

O well, no one would know would they?

Then it was time to change to the BIG needles and do stocking stitch – I could cope with that. One row plain & one row purl. Need to do this for 19.5 cms ( whats that in English?) Well, after 7 hits on various Google sites I finally found out that

19.5 cms = 7.677 165 354 3 inch. HOW PRECISE IS THAT?

Knitting now returned to the bag by the side of my chair – for quite a long time I think