Knitting with Chopsticks

Recently my mother and I went down to Christchurch to visit my older sister, who has just had a new baby girl. Her other son, my nephew, is 10 now and is so excited to finally have another sibling. Mum was knitting baby girl an adorable little green and pink striped cardigan out of pure alpaca wool, talking about the importance of 100% wool garments and blankets for newborns, and how there really is no place to buy them as cheap as it is make them. My nephew decided to jump on the bandwagon and asked his Grandma to teach him how to knit for his little sis. We searched around earthquake stricken Christchurch to find most of the stores closed and areas blocked off and no shops selling knitting needles. So we tried knitting on coloured pencils, which didn't really go down well. My sister, having an abundance of chopsticks from various takeaway shops, offered then up for trial, and they worked.... kind of. The frail wood would splinter and fray the wool as he knitted, in the end, Grandma sacrificed her beautiful cardigan to her grandson, who decided to make an awful lot of "button holes" in the sleeve he helped her knit.

Back from Christchurch, fresh out of a job and with my little sister discovering she was pregnant and having baby boy at 31 weeks, I wanted to jump in and be favourite Auntie right from the start! Buying lots of presents, reading up on premature babies and what they need. Pure woolen items were again high on the list and I searched around shops to try and find woolen blanket, but all I could find was polar fleece which is the worst thing you could wrap a newborn in second only to wrapping it in icy wind.

So I went home, grabbed some pure wool bundles I stashed in my closet from my last failed attempt at knitting, and prepared myself to give knitting another go. I researched some "how to" videos online and had just about everything I needed... Except for needles. Frustrated, I thought back to my nephew's attempt to find a good substitute and remembered the chopsticks, hunted down my partner's authentic Chinese chopstick collection and started knitting. And the result...

A little wobbly to begin with, but I am very happy with my little grey square of authentic Chinese chopstick crafted 100% pure New Zealand wool!