Yarnpiggy posted about Knit & Crochet Blog Week 2010 last week sometime and piqued my interest. Eskimimi Knits is hosting the first inaugural Knit & Crochet Blog Week to celebrate fibre bloggers and talk about our shared passion. There are discussion topics for each day, as well as a “wild card” if you aren’t particularly inspired by the daily topic.

So, onto the first topic!

Starting Out: How and when did you begin knitting/crocheting? Was it a skill passed down through generations of your family, or something you learned from Knitting For Dummies? What or who made you pick up the needles/hook for the first time? Was it the celebrity knitting ‘trend’ or your great aunt Hilda?


I first picked up knitting needles in grade 8 (age 13) when my art teacher decided we all needed to learn to knit. She wanted to see a finished product, no matter how ugly or misshapen. So for a couple weeks in the fall at our school, you would see 13-year-old boys and girls sitting in the hallway knitting.

My grandmother, Nanny, passed away when I was about seven years old, but she was an avid knitter and sewer. I have inherited some of her FOs and, more recently, needles, yarn, and sewing patterns. Once I was older than seven, my Nanny probably would have taught me to knit herself.

Now crochet is a different matter. I wanted to learn and expressed an interest while I was living in England in 2007/2008. My boyfriend’s grandmother invited her neighbour over to teach me to crochet. I sat there and created the Ugly Square of test crochet while they gossiped about the latest community meeting they had. Every-so-often I was told to stop hunching over and sit up straight, and that my crochet looked great. But once I got home to Vancouver, I got Chelle to sit down with me to teach me (again).