Thursday, December 27, 2007

How to Knit Portuguese style

Christmas day

Until probably a month and a half ago I thought there were only two ways to knit, continental and english style (which is how I knit) and then I stumbled upon a very peculiar you tube video on someone's blog which showed a woman knitting with two crochet hooks, using a knitting pin, and putting the yarn around her shoulders and she referred to it as the Portuguese style. I searched the internet but couldn't find out much about this variation of knitting. I had to know and wasn't going to take "I haven no idea what you are talking about" for an answer, since I knew my grandmother who passed away when I was 8 would have known the answer, I HAD to find out. So I went to my personal knitting know-it- alls, my other grandmother, Grandma Honey and her friend Marie who lives next door. My grandmother had no idea what I was talking about and Marie accused me of making it up! Marie is quite the character, to sum her up she is the wonderful hilarious italian woman who lives next door to my grandmother (they have a path between their houses, isn't that cute?!) she shows up whenever she wants with her portable phone and is not afraid to grab knitting out of your hands and rip out hours and hours of sweat and tears if she sees a single mistake, even if you just learned three hours ago! That Marie is fierce more on that later before I go off on a tangent. Next I went to my dad, now I knew that my dad probably knew nothing about knitting but I thought I would at least give him a chance considering that Portuguese was in fact his first and only language until he was 5 and grew up in Stoughton/Canton MA which has one of the largest portuguese populations in the US and my grandmother was always making me pray novenas to the lady of fatima every time I visited, while knitting or crocheting up a storm AND blessing me with holy water at the same time! That is talent. Whew this is another tangent I could go off on, refer to two posts back about crazy catholic upbringing, but back to knitting. Nothing. To make my story short, I asked a lot of people and got lots of dead ends. To my surprise on Christmas morning, I opened a dvd shaped present from under our teeny tiny christmas tree and was surprised to find "Learn How to Knit Portuguese style". I immediately called my grandmother (pictured above) and spread the news. Sadly the woman in the DVD knits with regular knitting needles and not crochet hooks oh well. I've watched most of it sans knitting needles in my hands but when I get back to Brooklyn am going to break out my yarn stash and prized wooden needles. Stay tuned.