Knitting - the perfect antidote to the Irish winter

After years of abstinence, I have taken up knitting again in the past few years - I already posted on an earlier project here. I knit primarily in the winter, which as any of you familiar with Ireland know is a grim affair that calls for endless reserves of creativity and diversionary tactics, some good and some not so good, depending on your perspective.

Examples of the latter abound - vegging out on the couch watching late night trash TV, overeating every kind of calorific comfort food, and risking rickets from lack of the Sunshine Vitamin D, and osteoporosis from lack of any meaningful weight-bearing exercise - a walk around the block with the dog or to the shops for the paper at the weekends is as good as that gets.

The former - reading all those books you didn't get to bring on your summer beach holiday in the sun thanks to the punitive Ryanair restrictions on luggage and the second mortgage you'd need if you decided to bring a few blockbusters that took you into excess baggage territory. And blogging - it seems to be more a winter activity, sitting in front of the computer of an evening, whereas if it's daylight till 11pm there's an imperative to be out and doing, or agonise about wasting the daylight. Baking comes into winter activities as well, as it seems to go with the comfort eating the bad weather induces.

As usual I went off on a tangent there - but it does come back to knitting in a roundabout way. I find it relaxing and enjoyable and I can multi-task nicely - knitting goes well with reading and watching TV so I can incorporate a number of the above-listed activities -even the eating fits in!

I've been having a ball knitting little baby clothes for Sofia - a matinée jacket with a bonnet or two, and another bonnet in progress right now - and I've made a few hats for myself, along with a few scarves and the furry waistcoat I showed in my last knitting post. The more intricate patterns of the baby clothes are a nice challenge and it's very satisfying to get the desired results.

You can see some photos of them being modelled by Sofia and myself. One of the caps (the blue random-dyed cotton one) was a new style, knitted on 4 double-pointed needles from the crown to the brim, in a sock-like circle. I was pleased it worked out and it's very cosy, down to even looking like a tea-cosy!

I've been having fun this past week showing our old friend Tandy how to knit - she is a whiz at crochet but knitting was new territory for her, so we spent the evenings she was here when we weren't otherwise occupied clacking away at the knitting.

I showed her the rudiments of casting on and off, which she practiced to perfection, both the thumb and two needle methods, and then she did samplers of garter stitch and of stocking stitch. I have this book which seems to have American knitting terminology and I've had to do some mental adjustments - Casting off is Binding off in this book, and Stocking stitch is Stockinette stitch. Everything is well illustrated so I should be able to cope.

I have some knitter followers - should that be Knitters on Twitter? - and I love their blogposts on their craft, but they are so advanced I feel quite inadequate - then I remember all the fancy stuff I did over 20 years ago when the kids were small - Aran jumpers with their intricate textured patterns - Moss stitch, Blackberry stitch, Cable stitches of every variation - and themed jumpers (sweaters) with cartoon characters - Dennis the Menace of Beano fame and Desperate Dan of Dandy fame -beloved of me in my childhood and a generation later their appeal to our boys was no less diminished.