No sun — no moon! 
No morn — no noon — 
No dawn — no dusk — no proper time of day.
 
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease, 
No comfortable feel in any member — 
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees, 
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds! — 
November! By Thomas Hood
. . . but we do have knittting! Now that the clocks have gone back and evenings are long and dark it is time to pick up my needles to work their magic on a ball of yarn. It is immensely satisfying to watch as a single strand is transformed into a garment with shape and form.
I have been knitting for so long that I have no recollection of who taught me. I suspect that it was one of my grandmothers, most likely my mother’s mother. I have a clear memory of sitting around a chimney-stove in my infant classroom knitting a dishcloth. Since I could already knit, I was instructed to help the girl next to me. She had no idea how to pull her huge stitches tight and I had no idea how to help her. By the time I was ten I was knitting dolls’ clothes. I still remember the frustration I felt trying to knit squares of turquoise yarn into the skirt of a maroon dress that I was knitting for my little nine-inch doll. I did not know the ‘intarsia’ technique of twisting strands of yarn together when changing colours so there are no gaps. There was a gap in my knitting every time I changed colour.
Like many beginner knitters I had learnt to knit by sticking the right hand needle into the next stitch,holding both needles in my left hand then taking my right hand off the needle to throw the yarn over to create a new stitch. This method is slow and inefficient. When I was eleven my Mother took my siblings and me by sea to visit our Father in what was then the Gold Coast – now Ghana. There were three nuns travelling on the ship and when one of them noticed me knitting she taught me how to wrap the yarn around my forefinger to create new stitches without lifting my hand from the needle.
My knitting first took off when i had my first baby but my knitting really took off after I retired. Instead of settling into my armchair to listen to an audiobook or podcast, prone to dozing off, I like to be working on a knitting project.When my narcoleptic brain is engaged on two activities simultaneously – say, listening and knitting – I do not fall asleep.

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