I took up knitting during my junior year of college. Unfortunately, I learned from a website which explained how to knit incorrectly, and I spent the next year producing a textured knitting which was much rougher than typical knitting. During that time, I taught Beth how to knit, and she went on to read more about knitting and discovered that I was producing twisted stitches and what the right way to knit is. Since then, we've had a synergistic relationship with our knitting, though on balance Beth has probably taught me more than I've taught her.
Most of my knitting is done while doing other things, especially watching movies at home. It makes me feel better about the time I spend watching movies because I have something to show for it when I'm done.
I'm perhaps a little unusual among knitters (aside from by being male) because I enjoy getting the finished product more than I enjoy knitting. I knit mostly because it's a convenient way to make garments that I would otherwise have to spend a lot of money to get. High quality thick wool socks, especially, are difficult to find. Most "wool" socks are actually a blend of wool and mostly synthetic fibers. As good as they are, pure wool has nicer properties — it's just more comfortable.
Lately I've been doing a fair amount of color work, often called "Fair Isle" knitting because it was popular in the Scottish Fair Isles. It's done by alternating two different colors of yarn as you knit in order to form patterns. The result is not only pleasing patterns, but a tight outer layer of knitting with a looser inner layer of wool (from where the unused strand of yarn was carried behind) that's wind resistant and very warm. Those are qualities that you can really appreciate in Ithaca, NY when the temperature hits -8 degrees Fahrenheit.
Color work has also given me an opportunity to mix in another hobby: programming. Designing the patterns to use on garments can be a bit difficult. One of the more common approaches I've seen is working it out with graph paper and a pencil. So naturally I wrote a program to handle the graph paper so that drawing lines, seeing how patterns look repeated, moving patterns around, printing copies, and so forth is much easier. I've released the program under the GPL, but I still need to consolidate its distribution.
