Two things:
First – Shortrounds is officially one year old today (woop woop!)
Yey! This is the longest I’ve ever stuck to a hobby, ever! When I started knitting four years ago, I had no idea how much it was going to grab me by my rib-knit cuffs and shake me up. I’ve had hobbies and interests in the past, but I can safely say, I’ve never stuck at anything so consistently as knitting.
No one was more surprised than I, when I decided to start documenting my little past-time in blogging form. I’m thrilled to have landed on Shortrounds’ one-year anniversary still going strong, and having only fuelled my hobby further! I could have looked back at past projects and got all nostalgic today, but hey – it’s only a year. Maybe when Shortrounds turns two we’ll have a ‘blast from the past’ blog ey?!
Second – Shout out to all my fellow lefties in the room! It’s International Left-Handed Day!
I don’t know whether it’s just me, but I struggled with how to hold my needles when I first started knitting. Me and my friend learned around the same time, me being left-handed and she being right-handed. We watched tutorial videos together, showed each other our own techniques early on (countless hours spent trying to figure out which needle went where and where the bloody hell you hold the yarn!) and it soon became abundantly apparent that we both knitted very differently.
I’m an odd one, because apparently as a lefty, I should be able to more naturally adopt the ‘continental’ method of knitting. But I seem to have developed more of a hybrid of my own – a mixture of Irish cottage knitting and ‘whatever the hell works best’. By holding my right needle still, working the yarn with my right and doing the majority of the movement with my left needle, I find I can knit at quite a fast pace.
I have tried to learn continental style, and at one point I pretty much had it down. (I was tempted by the fact that one of the fastest knitters on the planet, Miriam Tegel is a continental knitter). But oh man, the concentration it required. It just doesn’t come naturally to me.
In conclusion, on this auspicious occasion, if I’ve learnt anything over the last year of blogging, it’s that (left-handed or right-handed) there are no real rules when knitting.
So here’s to knitting however the hell you like, just to get the job done!
x