The First Time

My first mature-age knitting project commenced when we were living in a rented house in Ballarat which was about as toasty as a refrigerator. Ballarat, you see, has the reputation in Victoria of being the most consistently coldest city and our house was a 1940s double fronted brick home complete with corner sash windows to let in lots of light and, unfortunately, cold. I don't know how I stumbled on my first pattern but I do know I was wanting something very easy to cut my teeth on and thus I discovered the website of Renee Sparkes "FroggieMeanie.com" (now sadly defunct so I won't add a dead link) and a pattern for Lyra's hood in the Golden Compass. You can still access the original pattern on Ravelry, the largest online knitting community http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/golden-compass-hat and there are a number of modified versions of the pattern available on other people's websites and blogs.

The pattern uses two strands of super chunky yarn and some giant size 12 needles which I think were the biggest ones I could find in Spotlight at the time. The most fun non-knitting part was making the ties. I just loved watching those twisted pieces of yarn coil into each other.