What An Honour

As you know I am an inveterate knitter. Knitting has been one of the most important things in my life for the last few years and has been responsible for keeping me sane at times. I starting designing socks last year in response to the suggestion that I enter I Knit London's design competition. Since then I have designed a hat that was a Christmas present for one of my knitting friends and I have designed a shawl which is being test knitted at the moment.

At the beginning of the year I started to teach knitting classes at the shop in addition to the crochet classes that I have been doing since about October last year. All of this keeps me pretty busy and I don't think that I have the time to be depressed at the moment.

One of the problems with knitting (and crochet) as a hobby is that there is a shortage of good yarn shops about these days. Twenty or thirty years ago there would have been at least one shop on every high street around the country selling knitting wool, knitting needles and crochet hooks, and some would have major haberdashery areas too. Today, such shops are few and far between, which for a yarn junkie such as myself can be a problem. I found I Knit London last year and it has rejuvenated my knitting because it has such spectacular yarns on the shelves.

Yesterday, when I arrived at the shop in readiness for my knitting class, Gerard, I Knit's owner, asked me what I thought about the idea of the shop running a sock club. For those that don't know what a sock club is, the idea is that knitters subscribe and are sent a pattern for an exclusive sock design and a suitable amount of specially selected sock yarn to be able to knit a pair of socks every couple of months. Although I have never actually joined such a club, I think that they are a great idea especially as they can introduce knitters to yarns that they may never have used before.

So, why am I telling you all about this? Well, Gerard has asked me to design the first pair of socks to be presented to the sock club. Having spent so much of last summer knitting socks while trying to come up with my design for the competition, I have a basic sock pattern which lends itself to being used as the basis for practically any design that I can come up with. And that is what I have to do now; come up with a design that is different to anything that is out there already.

This really is a big honour for me and I am determined to come up with something really special for Gerard and his sock club.