Diversion #16: Needles and Pins
"No, don't panic," said Duo cheerfully. "Double-pointed needles are your *friends*."
Julie looked unconvinced. "I'm still trying to make sense of two needles; how am I going to manage *four*?"
"Five."
"That's even worse!"
"Trust me; I'm going to show you some little tricks and a cheat or two. You want to be able to make socks and mittens, don't you?"
"Um... Yeah... I guess so..."
"I'm not going to just toss you in to sink or swim. We're going to start with a hat. It's a little bigger than socks and the shaping is minimal, but it'll give you practice with circular knitting. *And* I'm going to start you with a circular needle, so you aren't juggling 5 needles yet." Duo opened the bag at his feet and began pulling out strange objects.
"Do what?" The girl stared in confusion at the growing pile of... implements. "You know, crocheting is so much simpler," she added wistfully.
"Hush now," Duo chided gently. "Today we're knitting."
She sighed, steeling herself for humiliation. At least Duo never laughed at her or yelled when she got things wrong.
"What's a circular needle anyway? Why do I need that?"
He held it up, dangling it by one end. It bounced and curled like an irritated snake. "This is a circular needle. It consists of a cable with a knitting needle point on each end. The nice thing about circular needles is that they are very versatile. When you're making something large, with a lot of stitches, you can use a circular needle to hold all the stitches at once. You just treat them as if they were straight needles; you turn your work at the end of each row."
"So, you just go back and forth. But what if you lose your place?"
"I'll teach you how to figure that out, and how not to get lost in your pattern; don't worry."
"Okay. Continue then."
Duo made a little bow. "You can also use them to knit around in a tube shape. In that case, they take the place of double-pointed needles. You don't have to step from one needle to the next, you just keep going, around and around, until you get to the end, or until whatever you're doing gets too small for the circular needle."
"Then what?"
"Then we switch to double-points," he grinned.
"Damn. I was hoping maybe they went away."
"Nope; sorry. Twelve inches is about as small as you can go with circular needles."
"You know, my manual dexterity sucks," she offered conversationally.
"It does not; you wouldn't be able to crochet if you had no manual dexterity. This is just a new skill set. You'll catch on just fine."
"If you say so," she muttered doubtfully, eyeing the collection on the table.
"Okay," he said, finally having arranged the needle, yarn and bone rings to his satisfaction. "We're going to cast on just the way you did yesterday." He handed her the needle and the yarn. "Seventy-six stitches."
She set up the yarn as he'd shown her and turned to the needle. "Where does it...?"
"Either end."
"But what if they slide off the other end?"
"They won't; trust me."
"Okay..." she sighed and commenced casting on the yarn to make a firm beginning.
She had to stop several times to untangle the yarn and to count her stitches. Duo waited patiently, sipping at his soda and nodding encouragement when she hesitated. Then he did as she had done for him, stepping around to reach over her shoulders to show her how to hold the ends of the needle and to begin knitting in the round. Predictably, her hands were awkward and her stitches clumsy at first. Duo demonstrated how to tighten up the first stitch to avoid a 'hole' in the work, and placed a ring on the needle to mark the demarcation of the rounds. Then he left her to knit and purl the next twelve rounds of ribbing.
Julie grumbled and swore to herself as the stitches formed and the fabric below the needle lengthened, but each subsequent round was neater and more consistent than the previous. When she reached the end of the last round, she gave a great sigh and held the work up for Duo to see.
"All right! You're doing really well!" he enthused, but Julie glared at the ribbing resentfully.
"That's a pain in the butt, having to move the yarn every time. What if you get confused?"
"Mistakes are easily fixed."
"Maybe for you..."
"No, really they are. I'll show you how, but as long as you pay attention, you won't make mistakes. Now you're going to work in stockinette stitch for the rest of the hat."
"That's the flat one, the knit one row, purl one row, right?"
"Yep. Except that when you knit in the round, all you do is knit to make the stockinette stitch."
"No purling?"
"Nope. All knitting, all the time for basic stockinette."
Julie grabbed the needle back from Duo. "All right! Let's get moving here! What do I do next?"
"Okay. First we switch to the larger needle. Just knit off of that one and onto this one... It'll be a little awkward until all the stitches have changed over. And you're going to add a stitch twice." Julie glared at him, wide-eyed, but he just smirked. "I'll show you; it's so easy. Here; put the point of your needle here... and lift that bar up and onto the needle. Congratulations; you made another stitch. Knit the next thirty-eight and do it again. That's it... And you just keep going for about two inches, and then I'll show you how to decrease."
"But I just increased..."
Duo nodded. "Yeah. And now you're going to decrease. That's how you do your shaping for this hat. You just knit; I'm going to get some more soda. You want a refill too?"
"Yeah; thanks, Duo," she said absently, concentrating on her knitting.
The stitches went very quickly; around and around, slipping the row marker every time she came to it; the motion of the needles got smoother and smoother. Maybe this wasn't so hard after all. Maybe she could actually retain what she learned. Duo was a good teacher; patient, soothing, willing to explain and answer the stupidest questions. She counted her rows and kept knitting. Duo returned with the soda refills. She counted again and knitted one more row.
"Okay, there's my two inches," she said triumphantly, offering it up for inspection. It did look much better than the first couple of rows. To hell with patterns; she'd be perfectly happy to just knit and knit and never purl at all. God, maybe she could even knit a sweater... That would be so cool.
"Now, we begin the decreases," Duo pronounced. "You're going to knit two stitches together. Insert the point of the needle into... that stitch and the one to the right... Now throw your yarn... and finish the stitch. See? You had two stitches there, but now you have one. You've decreased one stitch."
"That was easy..."
"Told you," he smiled. "Now you knit eleven stitches even; that means no increases or decreases, and then you do another decrease the same way. Then eleven even and another decrease, for the rest of the round. Then you knit 5 rows even, no increases or decreases."
"And then I do the decrease-knit eleven again?"
"No, then you do decrease-knit ten."
"Ten?"
"Yeah. That causes your decreases to line up because your rounds are getting smaller with each decrease. The pattern is for one decrease round and five even rounds. Each subsequent decrease round has one less stitch between decreases. You're taking out six stitches each time, for a total of eleven decrease rounds. Can you remember that, or shall I write it out?"
"Um... I'm going to do decrease, knit ten, decrease, knit ten on this round, then five rounds even, then decrease, knit nine?"
"Yep."
"Okay, I've got that. How long do I do that for?"
Duo looked at the knitted fabric and the length of the needle. "Maybe down to seven or even six. Then we'll switch to the double-pointed needles. If the stitches start to get way stretched before that, though, just stop." He glanced at the notebook with his calendar. "Tuesday okay?"
"Yeah, Tuesday's great."
"Okay, then. Just take your time and remember to count." He got to his feet and gave her a hug. "See you."
"Oh, yeah. Bye Duo..."
Damn but Duo was a sweetheart. Why couldn't other guys be that nice? Without being gay...
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