This is for you, MG

I found this video on Howcast. I'm sure there are other videos out there for lefties. If you use another method to "load" the yarn around your right hand fingers, use it. I use the same method for knitting as I do when I crochet.

Kitchener Nightmares

I cannot figure out how to graft the toes closed with the Kitchener stitch. I've followed directions given with sock patterns, directions AND photo examples in a knitting encyclopedia, and directions found online and I still make a mess of it.

I finished the first five pair of socks by just drawing the end of the yarn through the last few stitches with a darning needle - snuggly - and then securing it shut. They look OK to me. But, I would like to conquer the K. stitch!

Contacted the owner of the yarn shop in the next town. She said she can help. I think I just need to see it being done. Maybe I'm having a problem because I knit the Continental way. I have this week off work, so I'll go over there mid-week. Stay tuned!

That's how they knit in the Old Country

I'd visit GG & take my knitting along. She'd show me new stitches...give me tips about reading patterns...etc. I remember asking her, "GG, why don't we knit like other people?" Her answer was, "That's how they knit in the Old Country." I must have said, "Oh" and never gave it another thought. Not until I got into genealogy, that is.

WHAT Old Country? ALL of GG's ancestors were in North America more than 250 years ago and before they came to North America they were all from the British Isles.

I decided to do some research about knitting in the Old Country and discovered that GG taught me to do Continental knitting. Thank you, GG! I apologize to any "English/American" style knitter who might find their way to this post, but I can't imagine WHY anyone would do the English style. It looks like so much hard work. And it must take forever to get anything done. GG's Old Country style of knitting goes very quickly and the stitches are uniform.

I'll never know who taught GG to knit. It wasn't her mother, that I do know. Maybe it was her mother-in-law, KK, who DID come from the Old Country [Prussia.] I'd like to think that, because then I'd be knitting just like great-grandma KK!