Tuesday, June 01, 2010

Good old husband-finding skills

TLM first expressed the desire to learn to sew when I let her go with me to Spotlight, and she found a Dora the Explorer sewing machine. I managed to get us both out of there without buying (or promising to buy) said sewing machine. But every time she saw me with my well-used quick un-picker (i.e. seam ripper), she'd say "I want to sew something!".

And that, my dear readers, is why I have decided to teach TLM to knit.
Actually, it's because knitting needles aren't sharp like sewing needles.

But now that I've cracked open the blob of silky bamboo yarn (in a girly mix of purple and pink) and busted out the slinky knitting needles, I'm thinking that I should have searched for "crochet needle" on TradeMe instead. At least with crochet you've only got one implement to handle, and it's not very long.

So far I've let her occasionally start a stitch or pass the yarn the over, but I refuse to let go. Because, despite that fact that I intended the whole project to be a TLM DIY - I can just see myself re-looping them stitches over and over again...

6 comments:

Amanda said...

DOTH is very keen to try knitting but I am less keen to teach her for reasons such as you describe.

We've done a couple of kids kitset sewing projects with some success. Well I say we but actually I do all the working out how it is to go and starting everything off and supervise every stitch and finish them when DOTH gets bored. (I've found some of them extremely tricky TBH despite their supposed suitability for six year olds!)

Antoinette said...

Heaven bless you! I personally find that crocheting is about 1 jillion times simpler than knitting for the very reasons you've outlined. I bet it's the case for littlest hands, too.

Watson Woodworth said...

Cool.
Besides, it's a foundation for if she wants to learn to sew when she's older.
I still wish I'd learned to sew.

Violet said...

Okay then, it looks like I'll be online shopping for a wee crochet hook.

Nigel, it's never too late to learn to sew. Obviously you have never had to deal with too-long trousers, which is probably the one thing that has kept me from giving away my sewing machine in the past.

Watson Woodworth said...

I'm not a tall man, if I want to buy resale pants they're often too long.
Mostly I'm dealing with short wide fingers that have spent too much time in factories.

Violet said...

nigel: having stumpy fingers might put you at a disadvantage if you're hand sewing, but it shouldn't affect you so much if you have a sewing machine. Then again, that can be quite an expensive thing to buy, just to hem up trousers.