[color=blue][/color] :shrug:Thanks for the kindly replies to my first (well, second really 'cos I lost the actual first) post. I apologise in advance for any gaffe or failure in etiquette…I don’t really know how to talk to people over the internet…but I’m sure I’ll learn.
And I’m not sure how to make individual replies …so here is a collective one…
I’m from the right side of the Pennine’s, too, Limey (Rochdale).I just live in exile in Yorkshire. Sobering thought…I’ve lived in Yorkshire longer than I lived in Lancashire.
The reason for my rather complicated first project was that I had lusted so long over the beautiful Gansies that are sold (at rather frightening prices) on the East Coast of England that my husband( the ‘longsuffering’ type, who stands and sighs outside yarn stores!) finally bought me the ‘seaman’s iron’ (worsted wool), ‘wires’ (long dpns, size 2mm) and the book of traditional patterns by Gladys Thomson…so I had to get on and make it!!
I am fluent in Frog, 
because I ripped the jumper countless times, and I eventually got wise and replaced the wires with a circular needle.Sometimes I hated the project , but then I grew to love it. I didn’t finish the gansey until I was recuperating after a hysterectomy, but now I wear it with pride and have knitted another two since.
My mother and my aunt were both magnificent knitters. I wish I had shared their enthusiasm whilst they were around. But I have their needles, and some of their old favourite patterns. So I feel some sense of continuity.
I love this site already… Amy, the videos are splendid. I’m experimenting with magic loop knitting…Maybe I’ll do my next pair of socks this way.
If anyone had told me, years ago that I would be excited about knitting socks, I wouldn’t have believed them.But I do so love knitting now, and knitting socks particularly. Has anyone read Richard Rutt’s History of Hand Knitting? It’s a really wonderful book, but he says 'Today (1980s) [hand knitted socks] can hardly be seen, and only the old can remember how to turn a heel without referring to a book…Stockings were always dull work.Today’s knitter expects more pleasure from the craft.'
O, Bishop Rutt, how wrong you were.
I’m off to turn another heel! :waving:
