Fiber Views

I am feeling talkative right now and here is what I have to say:

I know of at least two views on what beginners should do in their projects:

Sally Melville implies with her books that the beginner should learn the knit stitch, maybe decreases and slip stitches, and churn out lots of knitting using those before moving on to lots of basic purl/ purl-knit combination garments, then move onto color knitting, and apparently texture in next. (However, if you google her, at least if you google "sally melville" by mistake (I forgot to capitalize) there is some sort of review or interview where she says stuff that leans toward the other side, so we'll call this the Knitting Experience style.)

Barbara Walker, on the other hand: Learn knit and purl stitches and start being adventurous! You can make simple patterns on your first garment!
( And I don't know where I read it or heard it, but I'll throw it in: Knitting will not kill or maim you unless extremely unusual and highly unlikely circumstances occur.)

I lean toward the Walker side fairly extremely. I love pattern stitches, I get darned bored with stretches of plain stockinette or garter. I do believe that a beginner should make one or two projects with the knit stitch to master it before moving to purl stitch, but I mean things like potholders or eyeglass/pen cases where knitting is not measured in square footage. Then, make a few small things with purl and knit or just purl to master it, then jump into the pattern stitches! To tell the truth, (*knitting *secret* divulged here*) cables are not that hard. They are just stitches with their knitting order changed!

I found out that I am very conservative (Note that I live in the United States when you read this; I am working on a project on Russia and reading about it this weekend, and I was confused because the conservatives supported the Communists. Huh? So remember to note that the descriptives "liberal" and "conservative" will mean different opinions depending upon what exactly the state of the place is. That is, those who wanted to overthrow Communists in Russia several years ago might be called liberals, while we in the U.S would lean toward a description of conservative for an Anti-Communism opinion. That's one example.) Perhaps I will create a similar quiz to tell you which side of this knitting opinion you are on. And, no I don't know exactly which of those conservative/liberal quizzes I took, but the other quizzes told me I was strongly conservative also.

Oh well, good bye!