It might have been mentioned several times in many posts on this blog, but I have been knitting since I was about 6 years old: I remember my mom getting me a set for kids to learn knitting with plastic needles. Every woman in my family knitted: my mom and my grandma made me cute sweaters. I still remember one with a mountainous landscape and a windmill. My grandma sat near her widows making socks even after her mind started slipping away. My mom loved knitting, but her arthritis forced her to put down the needles for good.

While I have been (able to) knit for almost my life, the record of completed projects is not that excellent. I’ve always liked to knit for babies, including making a Xmas Sweater for my baby brother in my teens, as their small size matched my short attention span. I definitely knitted a scarf for the current boyfriend at the time, which amounts to a whooping two in my lifetime, and few random accessories for me. More recently, I went through a phase of knitting socks, both of them, which is impressive as I tend to get bored doing the same thing twice.

My approach to knitting was fairly random: sometimes, mostly when knitting for others, I would buy the yarn to fit a project. However, most often than not, I would find cheap random skeins, and then find a project to do. After Hickey’s closed down in Henry Street, Aldi has been supplying the random mostly acrylic yarn. In the online world, I was aware of Raverly, I have had an account for few years, and used it often to find projects to match my accidentally acquired yarn. And of course I used online shops like Hobbii and LoveCrafts to buy yarn.

But…

But there was more knitting on the interwebs I wasn’t aware of, that triggered a shift in my knitting career: I have fallen into a rabbit hole of knitting and crochet YouTubers.

You know how once you click on a video, YouTube will suggest you another 55 related channels. It all started with a video on craft TikTok drama from Emma in the Moment – I have no TikTok*, but I like watching video commentary on various TikTok drama. From there, I started getting suggestions for other podcasters, and from them, I couldn’t get enough. The Wolly Worker , WoolNeedleHands, Kutovakika, and Fruity Knitting are my favourite.

I got very curious about trying yarn types I have likely never used, which includes merino, mohair, and alpaca. In particular, I got obsessed with Knitting for Olive because every podcasters mention it. However, before throwing myself at it with a sweater quantity (a term I learned from the videos), I got 3 skeins from This is Knit, a shop in Dublin, because I never touched merino wool and I didn’t even know if I’d like it! (Spoiler: I do) I also upgraded my mismatched knitting needles with a set of KnitPro interchangeable circular needles and short DNPs for socks. A very good investment to be honest.

The projects I am working on have been inspired by watching videos, and while I consider myself an intermediate knitter, they definitely taught me new techniques, including German short rows and colorwork.

This brings me to a plan I mentioned in my last post: knitting a sweater without a pattern, like my mamma and nonna. I must confess: I got a case of FOMO, wanting to try all those cool techniques, that I decided to acquire patterns to learn more new things before trying my hand at free handing a sweater.

So I could say: Social Media Made Me Do It!

But in reality, it just steered my knitting to be more intentional, and towards an online community I like to watch and learn from.

And before we depart, in a twist of events for this blog, which is mostly me starting projects that might or might not be completed before the end of time, I finished my first pair of fingerfull gloves. (Picture coming later).

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*I briefly had it during the pandemic when I run out of cat videos on Instagram.