If this is your first time at Knit Club, you must knit…

Well, it is *almost* my first time at knit club, but not quite. When I was younger my mother taught me the basics of knitting and I engaged in sporadic projects–a scarf here, a hat there, a half finished jumper or two–and now I have a wonderful mother in law who is helping me renew and build on that basic knowledge.

I confess to you my lack of knitting knowledge not because I seek to distance myself from the art, but rather to suggest that the pattern I am going to present here will be very easy. And also to let you know that I will be pretty much learning how to do it as I go along, so do feel free to add in any tips or suggestions in the comments as we go.

While I don’t necessarily have a lot in the way of finely honed knitting skills, I do have a lot of ideas and opinions on the subject of art vs craft, value given to traditional pastimes based and its relation to gender, and the personal creation as a political expression.

As an expression of those opinions I give you the project ‘one row purl, one row plain’ a blog based knit art project. Every day for the next 45 or so days I am going to post 10 rows of a scarf pattern I have created using the very cool knitpro web application. The scarf is designed to be in very basic stocking stitch (one row purl one row plain) and has two colours, a base colour and a contrasting colour that will be used in the pattern to form the text of a special message for all the crafty feminists that would like to join in this project.

The finished scarf will be aprox 450 rows long x 38 stitches wide. I will post images of my progress in the comments and encourage anyone else who you like to join me to do the same.

Edited to add: More than half the pattern has been posted now, but it is never too late to catch up–because it is posted in blog format the pattern is on the site in revers chronological order, but the first ten rows can be found here .