Last January one of my New Year's resolutions was to learn how to arm knit. Apparently it was a crazy year because I didn't learn until last week. Better late than never, right? I was reminded in part by the customers at Marshalls; I was seeing so many people with these awesome infinity scarves and asking if they'd made them. One woman came in wearing a scarf exactly like the one I have in the picture, same yarn and everything. I asked her if she'd made it and her boyfriend said, "No, I did!" I was so impressed that I peppered him with questions about how long it took, how many stitches he'd cast on, etc. He answered the questions but I could tell his girlfriend just wanted to go shop. The next day he came back with a guy friend and I was able to talk with him a little more. I was so excited that the scarf would look that way with the yarn that I had that I was ready to learn.
I watched a twenty-minute video by Knit.ca and got the gist very quickly. It's so easy, very therapeutic, and extremely satisfying. It's so quick! All of the sudden you have this fabric. The only thing that can be frustrating is gauge. It's hard to make your loops consistent and sometimes you get stretched loops that don't look so nice in the finished product. Joining at the end can also be tricky. The way they do it in the video I watched uses the yarn to join the two ends into an infinity scarf. Every other video I looked at bound off the end and required sewing to make an infinity scarf, which seems like an extra step to me.
(Riddle me this: this webcam photo is pretty good quality, but I'd like to crop it. So I imported it into PictureProject where I edit all my photos, and the quality got really blurry! Why? I decided to use the original, non-cropped photo, so that I wouldn't lose the quality.)
Hooray for learning a new skill! I want to play around with textures and holding two strands of yarn. Do you arm knit?
