This morning, over coffee.

Koog aan de Zaan, Netherlands, 1931. 

This morning, over coffee, I was flipping thru Pinterest and came across this photo. It's a National Geographic article on how two French Men in the 1930's discovered a new way of processing photos.

Here's what the original caption read: 
Traditional Dress A young woman, looking as if she stepped out of a Dutch Old Master painting, knits in Koog aan de Zaan, Netherlands, in 1931.

Her dress is beautiful, and the photographer captured incredible colors, and the process of potato starch, or "autochrome" is incredible. You can read the article here: http://bit.ly/1MSXFx8

But what I love is the way she is holding her knitting needles. It's not how I hold them, but it got me thinking of the various ways that people hold their needles.

I started out a thrower, knitting American style. It's how my Grandmother Josefina taught me how to knit and It seems like that's how everyone started out knitting. Working yarn in your right hand, your left fingers moving along the stitches.

But then after a while, after I put down the needles when I was a teenager, because I was more interested in boys than yarn, Kathy, a woman who I used to work with at the Toy Store in Sausalito reminded me how to knit again. She used two pencils, scrap yarn, and introduced me to continental knitting, or picking.

And I've been a picker ever since!

But the way the woman in the painting is holding her needles, reminds me of how Stephanie Pearl-McPhee knits. She's an amazing knitter, and quite the humorist too. Here's a great blog write up on her style of knitting, with videos, as well as a discussion on how others hold their needles.http://bit.ly/1ZKVdQz

And for more information on the Yarn Harlot herself, check out her blog, it's fantastic! http://www.yarnharlot.ca/