Last Saturday, I spent a most enjoyable three hours on a knitting course. I've attempted to teach myself to knit several times before but without an enormous amount of success. Hence, when I saw a poster for the Ministry of Craft's beginner's knitting course in Manchester, I signed up right away. I was particularly impressed that at the end of three hours, you would be able to produce a lovely knitted purse, although I was sceptical about my own ability to pull that off.
The course was held at the Fred Aldous Art Shop in Manchester and cost £30 including materials. The course was in the basement at the back of the shop's store room, which was perfect as it was a really hot day. The lighting and seating was great and there were hot and cold drinks for us. There were three other women on the course and our instructor was the lovely Rebecca. Although she looked terribly young to me, Rebecca had been teaching people to knit for years and even taught during her friend's jive classes, which sounded an interesting challenge.
The first thing that struck me when I looked the materials laid out on the table was the size of the needles and the wool. Huge. Well, 9mm needles and chunky yarn. This proved to be one of the keys to the kingdom - way easier to see what you're doing and to avoid the knitting getting too tight. I'd never seen a beginners kit like that, but now it seems really obvious. Rebecca was also able to sort out issues that had previously flummoxed me, like what to do when you create an extra stitch by mistake (knit two together - doh!).
Rebecca taught us to cast on and had us knitting away at our purses in no time. The tricky bit was creating the button hole, where you have to bind off some stitches and then cast back on, but Rebecca took us through it step-by-step. Once we had decreased our knitting to create the triangular flap of the purse, we finally learned how to cast off. We got our purses done in plenty of time to recap casting on, knitting and casting off and even to learn purl stitch.
I was completely thrilled with the course and my purse, but what next? I decided I needed to reinforce my learnings right away so I got some more chunky wool on the way home. I then made an identical purse, but this time in raspberry. It took me a couple of attempts and a look at a YouTube video Rebecca recommended to get the button hole right, but here we are:
For good measure, I did a little square purse too without the buttonhole and with a vecro fastening on the inside. I'm currently kniting another one that I might make a strap for (happily, I like purses).
Rebecca mentioned that it can be difficult to get started because easy patterns are quite hard to find. I've just bought First Knits by Luise Roberts, which looks really good and the initial instructions match what I learned on the course. The patterns progress from just knit stitch to cover knit with purl and then finally colours. I'm off to yarn shop tomorrow to get the materials for my first scarf!
Melx
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