the divvil made me do it

Or more accurately, Robynn. It's all her fault, (a) that I started knitting at all, she encouraged me, the pusher, and (b) that she pointed out what a good blog name "Purl-handled revolver" would make, and it turned out to be a google-whack. The daft, arcane and tangled gods of knitting are clearly making their will known.

This whole knitting binge started with a post on my other blog, thusly:

As a result of a random concatenation of circumstances, I just spent an hour reading through The Panopticon. It's a knitting blog. It's very well written and very funny, and features Dolores the cabaret sheep. It has also, in a response straight out of left field, and a horror hitherto unknown in my personal life, left me with a serious desire to overthrow the prejudice of a lifetime and take up actual knitting.

I feel an intervention is required here. I would be grateful if the relevant people would perform the following tasks:
(a) Non-knitting friends, please forcibly restrain me from this madness, pointing out its roots in psychological insecurity, life-avoidance and the frivolous desire for pretty clothes, and the unavoidable fact that, whatever I might fondly imagine, it's likely to teach me exactly the opposite of patience.
(b) Knitting friends, of whom I seem to have incredible stonkloads, please advise me as to the most user-friendly, low-grade projects likely to ease me gently into the long, hard process of converting some of my many thumbs to actual fingers while entangling myself in miles of yarn. The ultimate production of genuine articles of clothing would be a bonus.

God, I must be mad.

Since I received nothing but enthusiastic support, I am currently four rows into my first scarf for the fifth time. I should point out that I am thirty-mumble years old, and last knitted sometime in the dawn of time, when I was still in junior school. I hated it and was very bad at it. Even now, I regard knitting with a sort of paranoid fear: not only am I terrible at it, but I'm firmly convinced I'll actually unknit the fabric of space and time with some of these stitches.

This blog is for chronicling, in words and pictures, the slow and laboured progress of my acquisition of knitting skills. This alternative venue will prevent me being growled at or lynched by the readers of my other blog who think knitting is weird.

I should state now, for the record, up front, that even if I achieve respectable levels of skill at this game, I won't knit socks.