Saga of the Looms, part zero

(I am, for the record, still alive. Still having problems with my shoulder and elbow, to the point where knitting for more than two rows is a Very Bad Idea, and the combination of pain and painkillers makes my head a very fun place ... where nothing productive gets accomplished. Like, say, writing blog posts.)

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When I first learned to knit ... well, really, I don't quite remember learning to knit. I am fairly sure my sister taught me (unless I am conflating knitting with cross-stitch), and based on later instincts I am fairly sure I was taught English style (except I also vaguely recall a period in learning where my probably-my-sister teacher was confused because I was mirroring what she did, and I don't know if I was doing full mirror knitting or if I was doing lefty Continental) ... and then there was the thing where I stopped knitting for a while and then had to re-teach myself ...

Er. Regardless.

When I first learned to knit (allowing exception for the variability of memory), it was the only way I thought possible to knit. Two sticks, string, work moving from the left needle to the right needle, yarn held in right hand and thrown to make stitches. There was one way to cast on (longtail, for those curious) and one way to cast off (basic knit) and two ways to increase (yarnover if you wanted a hole and kfb otherwise) and two ways to decrease (k2tog and p2tog), and that was it.

That was The Way To Knit, and naturally nothing else counted as proper knitting. Anything else was Doing It Wrong.

I have since learned a lot -- possibly more than I needed to! -- about different methods of knitting. Right-handed vs left-handed, English vs Continental, Eastern mount vs Western mount^†, combined knitting, twisted stitches, Norwegian purling and other purl variants, different ways of doing yarnover, different ways to increase, different ways to decrease, different ways to cast on and cast off...

(Don't worry. There won't be a test on any of this.)

But for all my horizon-expanding, for all my time spent on ravelry (login required) and knittinghelp (login only required for premium content and forum posting), one thing remained a constant: knitting involved two sticks and a string.

Okay, yes, sometimes there were more than two sticks (cable needles, at first, and then four- or five-set DPNs for knitting in the round, or two circulars), and yarn is not really string, but at any one time it came down two two sticks and a string. And you used the sticks to make (interlocking) loops in the string, and you ended up with knitted fabric.

Two sticks and a string.

And then I started having trouble knitting. It wasn't the first mobility issue I'd had -- it wasn't even the first mobility issue to affect my knitting -- but before, I could adapt slightly and still use the same basic knitting method.

And a friend said, hey, I have these looms, and I don't use them, and I thought they might be useful to you -- interested?

I, of course, said yes, even though I hadn't the foggiest idea what a loom was.

And even though it took me a while to grok how the whole thing worked?

Knitting was, suddenly, no longer two sticks and a string.





† stitch mount, that is; although I will admit to being sorely tempted to make a World of Warcraft joke about Darnassian nightsabers (western mount) vs Ironforge rams (eastern mount). But, er, it's probably only funny if you're on painkillers...