purling? what’s that?
In June, I volunteered for an evening of knitting at Children’s Hope called Purls of Hope. Children’s Hope is an organization committed to helping those affected by HIV. The knit squares created are seamed together to create blankets for HIV babies. The event notice said no prior experience neccessary so off I went. One of the veterans showed me how to hold the needles and the knit stitch. There was a square that was half-finished, so I picked that up and knit that for the rest of the night. Looking around the room, I noticed a surprisingly diverse group of people - the quintescential grandmother knitting quietly and quickly; the college student looking for a creative outlet knitting in hot pink and sunshine yellow; and, the corporate lawyer who needed a relaxing hobby. There was one other woman, close to my age, who had learned long ago from her grandmother but was just recently picking it up again. She was having trouble holding her needles while doing something called purling. Now for those of you who know anything about knitting, the knit stitch is only one half of knitting, the other half is called the purl stitch. But at the time, purling sounded so advanced that I couldn’t wait to be good enough to learn it. At the end of the evening, I learned how to bind-off and finish the square. Little did I know I was bitten by the knitting bug.
Later that week, I did some internet searches and found some instuctional sites, blogs and retail store websites. That weeekend I found myself at a local yarn store (LYS) called Knit-A-Way in Brooklyn. They recommended Debbie Stoller’s Stitch-n-Bitch book, size 8 needles, and some worsted wool yarn. Off I went to see what I could make. Little did I know my mom actually knew how to knit! I had vague recollections of handmade knit sweaters when I was very young but she had stopped knitting by the time we went to school. As any traditional immigrant mother would, she chastised me for wanting to waste my valuable time on knitting. Who knows how long this bug will last but at the moment I’m having fun learning about different yarns and fabrics, examining knit sweaters at stores with a more critical eye, and figuring out how a series of knots and loops create such beautiful products. I’ll keep you posted on what I make and how they’re going.
