Everyone has their own story ... You have yours, I have mine

And with a nod in Jane Siberry's direction, today mine happens to be about how I started knitting.

I learned how to knit when I was in primary school, about six or seven years old. I learned a bit from my Mum, who is also a knitter. (As an aside, a relative of my Dad's once saw a familiar looking woman on a bus, but wasn't sure it was my Mum until she started knitting.)

Being a bookish child, I learned some more from a Ladybird book

My first project was a green garter stitch snake, which probably started life as a scarf. It had holes in it, an an inexplicable bulge along one side where I kept increasing stitches somehow, but without doing yarn overs.

So I knitted for a while, and even learned how to do intarsia, and entrelac, which I have completely forgotten now. My pride and joy was my jumper, knitted with two strands of yarn held together. Mum and the woman at the yarn shop thought my colour selection was dubious, but it looked fantastic when it was done.

A few things combined to make me stop knitting in my teens. Firstly, there was 80's fashion. It cannot be coincidence that most of my 80's fashion jumpers wound up as UFO's. Then here was the teenage thing, and not wanting to be just like my Mum, and going to high school and suddenly having homework. But most of all - I hated sewing up (something else I learned from my Mum). All the patterns were knitted in the flat and none of my books thought to mention knitting in the round.

It wasn't until I was in my thirties that I picked up my needles again and started knitting, as therapy. I was being bullied by my manager at the time, and I needed something to help me deal with the stress. So I knitted this coat that was a series of rectangles, and a couple of other things that I never wore, but they were useful garments nevertheless. This time, though, the world of knitting had caught up with me and I learned some nifty ways to avoid sewing up, such as knitting in the round and the three needle bind off. And being older and somewhat battle scarred, I had the courage to start treating patterns as a set of guidelines, not the law.

This time, knitting stayed with me.

My Year of Knitting From Home

Over the years, I've developed quite a stash of yarn. My Anti-Knitting Sister claims it can be seen from the moon. I've also developed quite a backlog of "things I'm going to knit some day". So I've decided it's time to do something about it. On 24 January 2012, I am going to set myself a challenge. I am not going to buy any more yarn. I will only knit projects from yarn already in my stash.

Deep breath. I can do this.

When I say, I am not going to buy any more yarn, I really mean I am not going to buy any more yarn, fingers crossed. I am making some exceptions. I am keeping my sock yarn club, because it is Enchanted Knoll Farm, it's organic and it's beautiful. I am allowed to buy yarn to finish a project. If I run out of yarn, I am not going to make a project languish for months until my twelve months is up. That's just stupid. I am allowed to buy yarn to knit to order. Well it could happen! And I am allowed to accept gifts of "re-homed" yarn from other knitters' stashes. Well that could happen too.

So there it is. I've placed my last order of yarn for my birthday project, and then that's it. I CAN do this.

Oh, and why start on 24 January, and not on New Years Day? That's because it is my birthday, and I hope that coping with yarn deprivation will make the impending mid-life crisis seem minor by comparison.