..Stitching & Bitching

Knitting. I used to be able to knit one, purl one, to the tune of an unfinished scarf. Scarves were easy, you just carried on going until voila, one very home-made looking article with which to warm your neck in the chillier months of the year. Or rather, shove embarrassedly at the back of your wardrobe and plump for the striped and horribly expensive high street version instead. I might take up knitting again, with this free time I allegedly will have on my hands. Trouble is, with it being such a specialist venture these days, all haberdashery products seem to have skyrocketed in price. An embroidery hoop for example, when I had half a mind to make my own cot mobile for my unborn child, set me back almost a tenner for the biggest one they had in the only sewing-type store for miles around. I'm sure, ten years ago, when I would cross-stitch enthusuatically with my mother, an embroidery hoop could not have cost that much. But then, mother always bought them, so I can't be sure. I'm not sure now, if it's because I'm so darned fussy, or because they are a rare and lesser-spotted species, that a ball of wool would set me back a fiver. And I'd need two or three. So for fifteen quid, I could get a scarf from John Lewis and be done with it, and wear it immediately in all of its scarfy goodness, instead of it being merely a concept, then a half-finished scarf, then discarded for next weeks Big Idea.
That said, I AM going to make a scarf. Out of pom poms. I was in Monsoon with my Nan a few weeks ago, and one of their winter window displays had a string of pom poms all in a row. I asked the smiling lady in the store if I could have it when they replaced it with their forthcoming Christmas display, and was glowered at. Smile- poof. Gone. I am not there to buy a several-hundred-pounds frock for a 'do', merely to enquire about stealing their window display, and thus am not warranted what would be classed as customer service. Ah well. Nan and I resolve to make one. Soon. When I get paid so I can go buy extortionate amounts of wool. Maybe I'll just ask Nan what odds and sods she has lying about. I'm seeing her later. I'll ask. Ah good, I feel all resolute now, like I'm going to be Doing Something.
I used to french knit a lot, with the four prongs on an eerie-looking doll that would just straggle some long crotcheted worm out of it, faster and faster as I'd deftly work the wool around it with my little seven or eight-year-old fingers. There was nothing much to do with the worm except spiral it up and make coasters out of it, and one only needs so many coasters, and my mum preferred her expensive glass ones instead, so the eerie-looking doll went away. Probably been thrown away by now. Shame. I'd like to teach my little sister to french knit. Maybe her coaster efforts will be slightly more well recieved than mine.