In the Beginning

Well, here we are. I, the blogger; you, the reader; and this, the blog. In case we haven't met, I'm Downtown. It's a pleasure to meet you.

Since this is my first blog post, and easily one of my first blog experiences altogether, let me briefly introduce myself. This is me (picture courtesy of the blog of the legendary genius herself, the Yarn Harlot). I'm the goofy looking fellow in the center.



I began knitting a little more than a year ago. My girlfriend is a Knitter with a capital K, and was pretty much always working on one project or another. And though there were -- and still are -- a number of ... let's call them societal influences suggesting that knitting might not be the most advisable of callings for a straight male, I can't deny that the whole process held a strange fascination for me. I was staggered by the incredible variety of patterns and structures that could arise from the simple flicks of the fingers that I saw. I found myself peeking, and eventually outright looking over my girlfriend's shoulder as she worked, watching the way the yarn and the needles moved, all the time unable to keep myself from wondering: could I do it?

Eventually, the curiosity became too much. One night I asked my girlfriend for a pair of needles, and a ball of yarn. That night she taught me the knit stitch, and the purl stitch, and away I went. For several weeks I swatched and swatched and swatched. I was intoxicated by the power I wielded with my size 8's and my worsted. I could make garterstitch, and stockinette, and reverse stockinette, and ribbing, and eventually, with the careful help of my knitting tutor, I was able to swatch even more exciting little pieces of personal wonder. I think it's safe to say that by the time my girlfriend showed me how to cable, and I knit my first little 4 inch by 4 inch swatch of braided cables, I was hopelessly and irrevocably ensnared by knitting, never to return to the ranks of the unenlightened again.

Of course, since then, I have managed to move past gleeful swatches. For example, those brightly colored toe-socks I am holding so proudly and goofily above are products of mine. In fact, it is those toe-socks which have led to the genesis of this particular project. Since that picture above made its merry way into the wooly world wide web, several members of the knitoblogosphere have asked that the pattern for the toe-socks be posted. However, seeing as how I had no blog, I didn't really have any place to put the pattern. So, I had only a couple choices. There was the plan which involved attempting to write the pattern in sky letters using a plane, but the flying lessons would have taken a while, and my handwriting is bad enough on paper. No, the only reasonable choice was to create a blog. And so, as I said at the beginning of this post, here we are.

Ironically, the pattern for the toe-socks is, regrettably, not quite finished. I have an unfortunate habit of not writing things down (something that this blog will hopefully be able to counteract) and thus have had to retrace my knitting steps in order to come up with something resembling a pattern. It will be finished soon, however, and will be posted here within the next couple days.

And so I draw to the close of the first post. I can't say for certain how this blog is going to end up, but I admit, I do feel a certain gleeful thrill of creation, not so different from that of my first little stockinette swatch. I obviously can't know what precisely led you to this particular corner of the knitoblogosphere, but since you are here, I hope you like it. I know it's not much to look at quite yet, but there'll be more before long, so feel free to stop by any time.

I suppose that pretty much covers it. Until we meet again, my friends.

-DT