Do You Knit?

Do you knit? Have you ever run out of yarn, in that you have a little of this and a little of that, but not enough of any one color for a scarf? Well, here's a possible solution. If you have two (or three) balls of yarn, each ball a different color, colors that blend well together, each ball by itself insufficient to make a scarf, simply knit the first row with both (or all three) colors of yarn, then two rows of the first color, then two rows of the second color, (then two rows of the third color, if you have a third color), then two rows of the first color, then two rows of the second color . . . well, you get the picture! It works, and there you'll have an original scarf that most folks wouldn't think to create! Congratulations!

Knitting Is Knotting

Knitting is simply knotting in an orderly fashion. . . Did you know that? Would that we could always turn life's knots into knits, or, to put it another way, "Would that we could always turn a problem into an easy solution!!!" It's easy if when you're knitting . . . not so easy in life, though.

Madame LaFarge?

On these beautiful September afternoons, as the sun begins to set, Marash Girl sits on her front porch, watching the world go by, and knitting scarves to gift her family at Christmas.  She has been accused of using her knitting as a ruse to register exactly what is going on in the neighborhood.  Were her neighbors accusing her of being Madame LaFarge? 

Dropped A Stitch?

The easiest way to knit a fancy scarf is to drop a stitch or two.  Drop a stitch or two, you ask?  Yes, ma'am (sir)!!!  Most fancy knitting stitches were originally the result of "mistakes". Here's how this mistake makes for a beautiful scarf.

Knit your scarf as you would, using the typical knit/purl or knit/knit, and when your scarf is as long as you would like, simply drop a stitch or two, preferably in an orderly manner . . . i.e., if you have 30 stitches on your needle, drop the 11th stitch and the 20th stitch.  Or play around with the patterns, and perhaps drop every fifth stitch.  In any case, when you have dropped the stitches you want dropped, simply pull them all the way through the scarf, and you will have created a lovely pattern for your scarf with very little effort.  

Marash Girl suggests that you experiment a bit with a small length of knitted scarf . . . i.e., knit about 6 rows and and drop a few stitches to see what pattern/s you prefer!!!  For sure, you'll be able to knit a  simple scarf that will appear quite fancy and complicated to all who see it and any one who is lucky enough to wear it!

Don't Drink the Koolaid!!!

Received a package of Koolaid with my yarn, Koolaid meant to dye my white yarn red, but Koolaid that is sold for a young child to imbibe.  Sadly, the ingredients include citric acid, calcium phosphate, Red Dye # 40, Salt, Artificial Flavor, Artificial Color Blue 1, BHT preservative!!!!  A drink meant for kids?  A dye  for the beautiful white yarn made from bamboo?  There's something wrong with this picture!!!!

SITTING IN UNION STATION . . .

Sitting in Union Station awaiting the train heading for Boston, Marash
Girl noticed that the woman sitting opposite was knitting, but she was knitting in a way that
Marash Girl had never seen before.  At the beginning of each row, she would add two stitches, and at the end of each row, she would delete two stitches, thus creating a scarf that slanted its way all the way to what would soon be the end of the scarf.  Marash Girl approached the woman to ask where she was from  . . . as it turned out, the woman was from Germany, and often made scarves in that way, scarves that would slant their way to completion . . . Would that life could be so easy. . .

Add What?

In her last blog post, Marash Girl recommended that if a soup or a scarf in progress doesn't look right, perhaps you need to add a color, a texture, a stitch.  She neglected to mention that, especially in the case of a scarf, you may  need to rip the whole scarf out and start all over again!  And in the case of the soup?  Watering the soup down would be close to starting all over again, and not as painful as throwing the whole soup out.  But if you must do that, you must!

Knitting In Life

Yesterday evening, Marash Girl began to knit a scarf using newly purchased, beautiful yarn, but as she started knitting, the beautiful yarn was not becoming a beautiful scarf.  Why?  What could she do?  And then she remembered that just as in cooking, just as in life, she needed to add another ingredient . . . another color . . . another texture . . . another strand of yarn.  The stitch alone was not enough.  Note of warning here:  be careful what you add, especially to the soup . . . you can alway rip out the knitting, but the soup?  

Okay, you philosophers out there . . . how would you apply this to life?  Your life?  The life of others?

Knit As You Fly!

They don't allow knives on board airplanes but they allow knitting needles?

Yesterday Evening's Knitting Circle

Brother James called this morning to ask "Did your knitting party keep you in stitches?"

Knitting Needles to the Rescue . . . or, On the Bus to Yonkers

Many years ago, Marash Girl was living in the Bronx with her cousin, Richie, and her Auntie Gohar.  She (Marash Girl) would travel by bus to work every morning, the bus from the Bronx to Yonkers (New York, of course!)  On one very busy morning, Marash Girl felt something strange down around her legs (those were the days when women wore longish skirts); she reached down and pulled up a man's hand!  Looking at the man next to her, whose hand she was now holding high into the air, she shouted, "What was your hand doing under my skirt?"  His answer?  "That's not my hand!"

From that day forward, Marash Girl carried knitting needles in her bag, needles which were very visible stretching their necks well over her bag.  That was the secret! Never again did she have a problem with folks getting too close to her during rush hour!

SQUARE KNITTING NEEDLES

Have you given up your knitting habit because your hands are cramping up with tendonitis, or worse yet, arthritis?  Don't give up hope!  Square knitting needles (yes, there are such things) are easy to hold and don't require the flexibility that traditional knitting needles require. Try them!  You'll like them! Or if you don't knit but know folks who do, please spread the word!

Knitting Needles - Perfect Protection in a Not-So-Perfect World

Yesterday, during a lull at the polls, Marash Girl pulled out her knitting needles and continued her knitting of an infinity scarf, a scarf she had promised to make for Meghan's birthday, the birthday now long past!  But the scarf is not the subject of this blog (as it was completed by the time that the polls closed) . . . 

"Look at those knitting needles!  They look dangerous," said a voter checking in at the polls.  Marash Girl laughed, as she remembered that knitting needles do look dangerous and could (if your grandmother had thought to use them that way) become a weapon to be reckoned with!  All of that dredged up a memory from long ago when Marash Girl used to ride the subway from Washington Heights to the Lower East Side where she was an intern Guidance Counselor at Seward Park High School.  So here's what happened.

As most of you can imagine, the subways and buses at rush hour are packed, and often offer the nefarious the opportunity to snuggle up close to an unwary rider. That was, in fact, the case, when one morning during rush hour on the subway in New York City, Marash Girl reached down and found an unrelated hand reaching up under her skirts.  Grabbing that hand, she held it high into the air, and shouted, "What is your hand doing under my skirt?"
"That's not my hand,"  answered the not so gentle man who was attached to the hand.

It was after that experience that Marash Girl unwittingly and unrelated to the incident (or was it?), decided to carry her knitting in her pocketbook; as the pocketbook was not large, and the needles were long, the knitting needles made their way up and out of her bag.  That very first time that she carried knitting needles onto the subway, Marash Girl noticed that folks made plenty of room for her as she stood on the crowded train.

When she related this tale to the voter who had commented on the needles and by then had  checked out of the polls,  the voter commented, "I'll have to spread the word.  Knitting needles -- the perfect protection in a not-so-perfect world!"

Drop those stitches and pull to your heart's content!

The Easiest Knitting Pattern (stitch, or better called drop stitch) in the world - Just rib it out (rip it out) . . . when binding off at the end of scarf or sweater, just drop every other stitch, or drop as many stitches as you want spaces (you always want spaces in togetherness, right?).. . . and pull so that the dropped stitch is dropped all the way up the scarf . . . Now there you have a beautiful patterned scarf with little or no effort!

Could this be a metaphor for life . . . okay, readers, go for it!

Long Lazy Summers: Learning to Knit - Crochet - Embroider

During those long lazy summers of the 1930's and 1940's, kids weren't allowed to be lazy, although they didn't go to summer camp.  Arax, Arppie and Kenar made needle lace (tserakordz) under the watchful eye of their mother Azniv and their Grandmother Turvant.  How they did it, Marash Girl will never know.   In the 1950's, Auntie Mary Kurtgusian Pambookian, Marash Girl's grandmother Yepros's sister,  tried to teach Marash Girl tserakordz (ցերագործ - translates "hand work" -Armenian Needle Lace), but MG's eyes were crossing and vision fading from the effort!

Thanks to  Grandma Jennie and Auntie Zabelle for teaching Marash Girl the easier skills of  knitting, sewing, crocheting, embroidery.   Mistakes were no problem.  Just go back and fix them.  The project had no schedule -- it was just fun to do . . . like taking a walk (if it wasn't so darn hot out there!)

When in doubt, rip it out! You don't have to finish this any time soon.  It is the act of doing that matters.  AND knit in at least one mistake -- only God is perfect.  (Marash Girl doesn't remember when she learned that factoid, but she has already taught her grandchildren -- both knitting AND the factoid.)

Tinking? Just rip it out!

Remember "a tinker, a tailor, a knitter, a sailor"?  No?  That's because Marash Girl just made up the last two words in the old nursery rhyme in order to introduce you to a new concept -- no, not a new concept, a new word -- no, not a new word, but an old word applied to an old concept that makes knitting more complicated than it need be!  According to a recent internet posting, tinking for the knitter means knitting backwards, a method of undoing stitch by stitch a row of knitting in order to repair an error that has been made (most likely by you) earlier in the row.  For Marash Girl (and, yes, you can assume here that Marash Girl knits), if the error occurred near the beginning of the row, it's easier just to rip out the whole row, error automatically corrected, (sort of like erasing a line of writing that doesn't sound right rather than trying to correct one word in the line)  and replace the stitches recently removed from your needle back on to the needle, or, continuing the metaphor of writing, simply starting from the end of the last sentence and rewriting the whole sentence. [Would that we could do this with our lives, right?]  Tinking probably has its origins in the word tinkering, the act of trying to repair something.  You Latin scholars out there:  have fun with waxing eloquent on this one!

Knitting to music!

Having problems remembering something?
Having problems teaching something?  Set it to music!

Teaching Iffar how to knit at age 4, Marash Girl and Iffar, snuggled next to each other, sang the directions in chorus:

Needle under, yarn around, slip it under, slip it off, dah dah dah,
Under, yarn around, slip it under, slip it off!

He's never forgotten the song, and he's never forgotten how to knit!

Another Scarf for Peace

Robin Young, host of WBUR's Here and Now (left) sports "Another Scarf for Peace",
this one, a specially designed double helix scarf made of Peruvian wool.
(The creator of the scarf, WBUR volunteer B.C., on right.}
Photo courtesy of Connie, another WBUR volunteer

Freedom is Beauty; Beauty is Freedom

Sometimes when we tamper with something beautiful, it becomes not beautiful.  Those were my thoughts this morning when I remember how beautiful the multicolored skein of ribbon was before I knit it into a scarf. . . but how can that be?  The freedom of the ribbon, the flow of the ribbon, the fall of the ribbon had been destroyed when it had been forced into the neat fat knots of, albeit, a beautiful scarf.  What lesson in life has that taught me?

Knitting for the Very Young in Duck, North Carolina

My name is Iffar.  I like to do knitting. And Knitting Knobby.  I like chicken nuggets and chicken.  The chicken that Marash Girl makes.  I harm no living things.  That's what we say in Kung Fu.  I really really really really really like knitting.  And my real name starts with an R; that is awesome.
[Iffar is the pen name for Marash Girl's grandson.  Iffar dictated the above blog post to Marash Girl who here recorded his words.  He would LOVE your comments!]