My favorite thing about knitting besides the sense of peace and relaxation it brings me, is the look of stitches. 
Beautiful orderly stitches in neat little rows, all perfectly aligned yet with color running amok throughout. For some reason, I find that so asthetically pleasing.:shifty:
See what I mean?
Knitting is bliss, isn’t it? My favorite thing about knitting is the things you can do with it, from very simple, plain patterns to extremely intricate patterns, and you can knit [B]anything[/B] you want to, with all the techniques out there. BTW- your knitting looks great.
My favorite thing about knitting is seeing a finished product that was made from one long strand of yarn. It feels so satisfying to create something that the yarn just wants to be!
Chel - you said it so eloquently. My (oboe) teacher used to say how something should sound totally spontaneous as the result of meticulous preparation. I think the orderliness of the stitches and the chaos of the colors fit right into that thought.
I agree with you two - Contiknitter and downthestream!
I personally love the gentle rhythm of knitting and seeing a beautiful texture emerge… Sheer heaven!
Yikes - are we really this sappy or what??? 
Yeah, we’re sappy.
There’s also nothing more satisifying than seeing your knitting being used by loved ones… It makes me warm inside when I see my grandchildren w/ their blankets… or toys… or all the other things I’ve knitted for others & seeing them use them. Just by taking 2 sticks and some thread we create gifts of love…
ok… i’m really sappy. sorry about that…
Pfft. :rollseyes: Saps.
:roflhard::roflhard::roflhard::roflhard::roflhard: Sorry-couldn’t resist!!!
Chel, I also like the look of stitches. Peaceful is the right word.
I like looking at/picking out yarn and imagining what it could be. I used to paint and I had the same feeling when I picked out tubes of color. I haven’t touched a paintbrush in years (life intruded :rollseyes: ) and I missed that feeling.
Doublereeder2, I also like watching the stitch pattern emerge. I am a new knitter and it’s still like magic!
First of all … I have to say … I was going to just say … I like to knit, I like to teach knitting , I like the stuff … somehow it became REALLY SAPPY :roflhard:
[FONT=Century Gothic][SIZE=3][COLOR=red]I love the process - which is never the same, but always the same[/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Century Gothic][SIZE=3][COLOR=seagreen]I love the tools and accessories - from yarn and patterns to stitch markers and everything in between[/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Century Gothic][SIZE=3][COLOR=blue]I love the colors and textures - of the paraphernalia and the finished product[/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Century Gothic][SIZE=3][COLOR=darkorchid]I love the knitting community - KH , friends who knit, my knitting guild[/COLOR] [/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Century Gothic][SIZE=3][COLOR=darkorange]I love to share - finishied products, explaining a tecqunique, teaching a beginner[/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Century Gothic][SIZE=3][COLOR=red]I love that unfinished projects or huge mistakes can quickly become a brand new ball of yarn ready to begin the process again, without a hint of what it didn’t become[/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT]
I totally agree! I’m making a square for a blanket and am trying a new stitch pattern and I find myself just sitting there admiring it! I just love the way it looks! It is SO COOL!
For me it’s all about the colors and textures of the yarns. It’s about the drape of a fabric or the transformation of a knitted piece into a felted one. It’s about the patterns and shapes that appear as I am knitting.
I have a background in textile design and have always been a color addict.
There is a character in a favorite book of mine, [I]Winter’s Tale[/I] by Mark Helprin called Pearly Soames. Pearly is a thief who is obsessed with color. He’s so obsessed with color that on his way to a gang war with his army of thieves all ready for a huge fight, he stops to watch some house painters putting a fresh coat of paint on a doorway so that he can watch the way the the paint looks when it is wet.
He steals paintings so he can experience their color and returns the ones that aren’t colorful enough. His gang of ruffians and thieves refer to his obsession as “color gravity.”
I think of Pearly every time I enter a yarn store. Sometimes I am so overwhelmed by the colors of a yarn that I have to have it:inlove:
Yarn is the way I indulge my own “color gravity.” And the best thing about yarn is that it has the extra added perk of feeling just oh so nice.
Ok, Chel. You got me started. I’m stopping now and going off to fondle my stash.:drool:
Best,
Susan
I really enjoy the process of knitting while in the middle of a project.
You’re already picked out the project and the pattern and the yarn, you’re not close enough to the end to start thinking about blocking or weaving in ends or seaming or wondering if it’s going to fit/be appreciated, and it isn’t such a huge project that you start wondering if you’ll have to take a week off from work just to finish the thing.
[COLOR=DarkOrchid]:cheering: What a lovely thread. I like the calmness I feel when I’m knitting. (Obviously I only feel that when it’s going right!)
I love seeing something come together from a ball of wool and knowing I did that.
[/COLOR]
There are so many things to love about knitting, where do I start?
I think my very favorite is that when I come home from a usually stressful and unfulfilling day at work, I can sit down and completely relax with my yarn and needles. It’s such a meditative craft. Not to mention, I feel like I am accomplishing something, which is often not the case at work, heh. It’s like every stitch I knit I am getting rid of all the daily annoyances. It helps that I’m using sharp pointy sticks and perhaps wondering who at work would most benefit from a poke in the ass with one of them :lol:
This is such a fun thread, I had to jump in. I agree with Brandilyne that it is meditative. When I get off work, I usually knit to calm myself down. I also love the fact that my supervisor knits at meetings, so then I know that I can, too. We both comment on how it keeps our blood pressure down, and keeps our hands from fusing around the necks of the windbags that drive us nuts.
I agree with the previous comments.
The other thing that I really enjoy is being able to take my knitting with me. Before I learned to knit, I was a beader. I tried taking my beading project to a swim meet - while a small girl came and whirled her finger in the bead container and tiny tiny beads went flying everywhere. That was the last time.
Today we will visit my parent (for a big family dinner) and my DH family (for a big family lunch) and I can take my knitting to both places!! :happydance:
:roflhard::roflhard::roflhard:
Coming from a hard-working Dutch background, where sitting around doing nothing is NOT okay, knitting is something that allows me to sit around and DO something–something I enjoy and allows me to create and feel and see and well, you know… 
I also love sharing knitting with others!
I love everything about knitting. The buying of the yarn…the knitting books I pour over and buy. I enjoy the process of knitting even more than the finished product. So if I have to frog something it really doesn’t bother me especially since I seem to knit fast.
The only “down” side of knitting sometimes is understanding the patterns. Some seem to be easier to follow than others. But I love the whole thing.
Wow - what don’t we love about knitting? I don’t even seem to mind too terribly when things go wrong - I always seem to learn from it, and like someone said, you frog it, and there’s the yarn, waiting for you to make it into something new. I started knitting again because it seemed like a [I]productive[/I] hobby - I love color, and kept trying to paint, terribly, to play with color. Somehow I could never convince myself to keep with it because what would I do with these bad canvases when they were done? Nothing, that’s what. Now I can play with color AND texture, and make things that I can give as gifts or wrap around my children, always knowing that I spent time and love, and now someone else has that .
Plus there’s watching how these simple movements become something so much bigger, orderly, beautiful.
And, really, it just keeps me sane.
Great thread Chel - and your knitting - and that YARN (how could I not mention the YARN!) are stellar! Thanks! :yay:
Same here. My DH thinks it’s the most amazing thing in the world that a hat can be made from, as he says, a piece of string.