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Reactions You Get When You Tell People You Knit: Add Yours!

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reactions to knittingOver the weekend I saw this fun post from Love Knitting about the reactions people commonly have when you tell them you knit.

Of course the first is “can you knit me something?” The answer is no, of course.

It also covers “I could never do that” and “why can’t you just go buy a sweater?” as well as a couple of other classics.

I would add to the list “you should totally sell that!” because I get that one all. the. time. (And we’ve talked about why selling isn’t as great as it seems before.)

Another great one is “I don’t have the patience for that,” while we all know that knitting is part of what gives us patience to deal with all the nonsense around us.

What would you add to this list? What do people say to you when they see you knitting or you tell them you are a knitter?

{Photo via Love Knitting.}

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Comments

  1. They ask me how old I am, and why I act like a senior citizen lol. I am in my 30s and quilt as well.

  2. I make hats, using 2 circs. People ask, “What are you making?” I spread it out and show them how it will grow into a hat. Then they usually ask how long it will take, and are surprised to hear that a hat takes me 5 hours to make. I haven’t heard anyone say they don’t have the patience, and there have been no comments about my age – probably because I am already OLD.

  3. Variation on the the ‘buy a sweater’ comment: as I am usually knitting socks when traveling, more than once I have heard, “you should just buy socks at Walmart.” As if Walmart ever sold any socks like the ones I am knitting. And where would be the fun in that? I knit socks because I enjoy it, obviously, not because I can’t afford to buy them. No one knits socks to save money. Silly.

  4. Oh – I wish I had the time for that! Often spoken by someone who has seen every episode of Game of Thrones 🙂

  5. Along with, or right after the dropped jaw comes the inevitable “but you’re so…rock’n’roll…” They can’t conceive the thought of a rocker, derby girl being quiet and concentrated for five minutes, if that long. I used to show them some “black-skull-rocker” piece or whatever. Nowadays I don’t bother, I just nod and say ‘yeah, well, stereotypes can be a b****, you know?” LOL

Have you read?

Make Your Knitting Machine Scarves Better

I feel like it’s been a while since I’ve shared any patterns for our circular knitting machine users. I know these devices aren’t for everyone but even though I much prefer knitting by hand, it is kind of fun to crank things out on these machines.

One of the most common early projects for a circular knitting machine is a scarf. Which makes sense, because it’s just one long tube and you can make it as long as you like.

One problem that comes from knitting scarves on the circular knitting machine, though, is that it can be hard to know how to finish the ends of the tube so that it looks like a finished scarf and not a tube of knitting.

If you’re not a knitter or crocheter, the most basic way to finish a circular knitting machine scarf is just by cinching up the ends and maybe adding a pompom to each end to cover up any hole that might still be visible at the end.

But if you have a little knitting or crochet skill or are willing to learn, there are a lot of different options for closing up the ends of a scarf. And this would also be true if you hand knit a tube scarf!

I recently wrote a post over at Our Daily Craft that includes five different ways to close up the ends of a tube scarf:

  • the simple cinching method mentioned above
  • sewing the stitches together
  • three needle bind off
  • grafting
  • crochet bind off

Grafting is my favorite because I feel like it gives the cleanest, closest to a seamless look. If you’re a knitter you may already know how to do it but even if you don’t it’s not that hard to learn.

Do you knit tube scarves by hand or machine? I’d love to know how you like to finish them!