Thursday, March 29, 2012

You are not a knitter!!

It happens every year. At least once...sometimes more times. Someone will know that I knit, and tell me they knit too...on a loom.

For example, during last years Curves holiday bazaar, a lady was selling hats. They were plain hats, two colors held together, knitted by her on a loom.
During my best friends second baby shower, the paternal grandmother presented her with half a baby blanket, proclaiming "I ran out of yarn and had to special order more from the store." She then turned to the woman sitting next to her, who must have asked something and said, "Yeah, it's my first knitting project too. I made it on one of those loom thingies." And when Cierra unwrapped the pinwheel cardigan I made for the little one, the paternal grandmother leaned forward and said "Oh right, you're a knitter too." And all I could do was shove a piece of cake into my mouth to stop the words from spewing forth.

Loom knitting, for those of you who don't know what it is, uses a circular (sometimes rectangular) ring of plastic or wood with pegs on it. You loop the yarn over the pegs, then use a strange hook to move the loops over the working yarn, and wrap the working yarn around the peg again....or something like that.
In my opinion, you're not really knitting unless you're using a minimum of two knitting needles. I say minimum because there have been times where I have knitted something using 4 or 5 dpns.  Using a loom to "knit" is the equivalent of me going to the grocery store, buying a bunch of pre-packaged things, making them at home, and then calling myself a chef. It doesn't work like that.

You are not a knitter, you are a poser!
 Now go pick up some needles and do it the right way. Otherwise stop calling what you're doing knitting. Call it looming, or loomitting, or something.

Knitting...pah!