Knitting nightmares

Holly Reid faces her fear of clacking needles, to produce a hat, of sorts, for her baby . . . and finds the craft is experiencing a revival
Tame though it may seem, my challenge, to knit a pair of booties while pregnant, should not be underestimated. It hardly competes with swimming with sharks, going for a gallop, or learning to drive, but stitching hundreds of woolly loops together in less than a week is certainly up there in my discomfort zone. An encounter with menacing fish can be over in a flash. But not knitting, no. That drags on row after row, gaining little more than 25mm with each row and demanding total concentration. I ask knitting expert Linda Chugg, of Auckland's Masco Wool Shop, for advice. She's excited about my task. Knitting is undergoing a revival, she says, especially among new mums. "Have you tried to buy pure wool clothing for a baby?" My only preparation, so far, has been accepting a few borrowed jumpsuits but I agree that most babywear fabric looks synthetic. But booties are not the easiest things for a novice knitter to try. "Try a beanie instead," says Linda. "You can complete the set with a woolen jacket if everything goes to plan." I leave the store with a ball of multicoloured wool, a pair of needles and a pattern. Linda has demonstrated all the tricky steps and told me to pop back if I get in a tangle. It takes me a few days to get started because I forget how to cast on. I check my "sailing for dummies" manual for a slip-knot to no avail. I try Googling it, but settle for a "half-hitch" to bind my masterpiece together. Three nights of solid knitting and my work reaches the 14cm mark. Things have become stressful. I have to slip one stitch over a knitted one, knit two together and count out a decreasing number of knits to shorten my rows. Eventually, I'm left with nine stitches on a needle. The idea is to loop them all together and sew up the seam to complete a hat. It's a little longer than your average beanie for babies and will probably have a cone-head effect. But at six months, you can't be fussy. I think I'll leave the jacket for a kindhearted grandmother to knit.