The Poorhouse is aware that that there has been a question on everyone's lips in the past month or so. Not that faffing around nearly declaring World War 3 in Iran or anything; more the sequel to the earlier post on one of the Poorhouse's craze-of-the-moments...knitting.

Yep, despite the vitriolic derision the Poorhouse felt even if you were kind enough not to write it, the (unspecified) challenge is still on. The results might surprise you - in that it hasn't been thrown away in disgust and frustration just yet. Be still your quaking heart and feast your eyes on the following woolly bad-boys.

The Grey Trapezoid. It still liveth, and it's bigger than ever, although knitting being the art of adding stitches to already existing stitches that may not come as the greatest surprise to be fair. Here it is, so big it doesn't quite fit into the picture. It was lucky no-one died in the filming of this unnatural wonder of the world.

There was a slightly bizarre continuation of the trapezoid effect. The width just grew and grew. One kind tutor gave tips as to why that would be and how to solve, but the Poorshape-width kept on increasing. I am non-plussed. To knit, for the uninitiated, you stitch new bits of wool into the loops already there. There are only a set number of loops, so how could you possibly make more stitches? The Poor-knitting truly does defy all laws of physics.

A quick shout-out is necessary here to the several kind people who contributed stitches to the effort. In fairness, the Poorhouse can't really spend more than 20 hours per working day doing stitches at the usual high speed of one row every 5 years.

Next? The wool went to the office for more hints, tips, gawking and general world-saving properties. The basics of some more advanced tactics were forced into your host's brain, and it turns out some people are so quick at knitting they could prospectively finish an item within a century. Yes, there are some people for whom the main Poorhouse deterrent from making a scarf - that the chances are global warming would have rendered such garments obsolete by the time it was finished - is not an issue. Here's an example of beauteous patterns, ribs, curls, textures, holes and bumpy bits the Poorhouse half-witnessed being created - but had no hand in.

The emotional result was that of inadequacy and jealousy. But also determination. The meeting ended and all came away with an extra insight into how to cast on and off, and a tad of an inkling about "purling".

A voyage to a prior homeland resulted in yet more gratefully received expert tuition. An elaboration on the purl-stitch was taken in and acted on surprisingly well, even if I say so myself. As far as the Poorhouse can tell, the purl is the opposite of a normal knit. It is flat where a stitch is bumpy, and vice versa. For instance, if you do a row of purl and a row of knit, you get a resulting shape with one smooth and one rough side. These being the 2 main (perhaps only?) types of stitch, it is merely combinations of these and dropping / adding stitches that create wonderous artworks.

Further more, a new colour was introduced, both in terms of skill transference and physical materials. It seems one doesn't need to go to too many complexities to do this; simply drop half of what you're supposed to be doing and accidentally use a new colour of wool on the right hand needle and somehow magically it all sticks together. You end up with loose ends mind - but there's probably a way to sort that out. Prepare yourselves for a vision you never thought you'd see.

Note well the introduction of:

• two colours
• a bottom sections of knit 1 row purl 1 row super flat knitting
• the beginnings of a pattern of squares. Go on, look hard, you can see it if you try. This is knit 5, purl 5 stitches in action. Knitting vs purling changes which bits of the stitches stick out, so doing an array ending up with 5x5 arrangements of knit next to 5x5 purls gives you an impression of squariness. Or more accurately, quadrilateralism perhaps.

Further adventures to come? Well, the Poorhouse has just received a copy of the knit-book highly recommended by the original instigator of Operation Knit-the-world. It looks suitable girly, but is hilariously titled "Stitch and Bitch" putting it to the top of the pile of bedtime reading simply on the merit of its title.

Lock up your sheep, the Poorhouse is in danger of doing some extreme wool-twisting.