Knitting

When I was in my teens I used to knit all the time (it started during a phase where I made all my own clothes). I knitted some fabulously intricate patterns: from a jumper covered with multi-coloured Egyptian hieroglyphs and a jewel-bright Pharaoh’s collar to match, to fashionable tops containing the latest and most interesting wools. Nothing was too difficult for me to have a go at as several large fluffy cable knit jumper dresses and a very difficult to knit (and hugely expensive) silk and alpaca cardigan showed.

And then I stopped.

Thinking about it now I have absolutely no idea why. I’m not even quite sure when I stopped as I can remember days of sitting at boot fairs, knitting my way through balls of angora wool and I remember showing Jane how to knit when she got pregnant, so that she could make some baby clothes. But at some point I stopped, and although I made a couple of scarves a few years ago, I’ve not really been involved in serious knitting for years.

Until now.

A few weeks ago I was trawling the interwebs trying to find something to go on the top of my Christmas tree (my beautiful Severus Snape dolls are either too big, and thus too heavy or too small and not imposing enough) when I discovered a knitted Snape doll which I thought would be perfect, both in size and weight. There were two choices: I could buy the doll ready-made, which was quite expensive, or I could buy the pattern and knit it myself. I decided to go for the latter and have spent the last few evenings immersed in trying to create this doll.

But somewhere along the way I seem to have lost my ability to knit, or at least, I’ve lost the ability to do anything but row after row of stocking stitch. Increasing without creating holes in my work is a problem I need to solve (Snape’s face depends on it) and, sad to admit, I even had to look up how to cast off because I couldn’t remember how to do it. Fortunately knitting is a pretty well-covered hobby on the internet and so there’s a million tutorials on every possible subject and even helpful videos, so hopefully the holey face will soon be sorted, but working on the doll has re-kindled my enjoyment of knitting and I’m seriously considering making a jumper … perhaps I’ll make a Weasley sweater for Mrs H3.

Mrs H3 is knitting too. She started making me a Slytherin scarf for Christmas about three years ago and I’m still waiting for it. She has recently moved home and is currently without television or the computer so I told her she might want to finish the scarf for something to do, a suggestion which she didn’t seem too happy with. She has promised that I’ll have it by my fiftieth birthday though – so only another five years to wait!

Photos of the doll will follow once I get him finished. Now, I wonder where I can find a pattern for angel wings?