Getting Started
I thought it would be fun to document my "descent" into the world of knitting. I had learned once when I was younger, but got bored with it and never got very good at it anyway. I mostly did embroidery in my younger years, turning to quilting after getting married. Some of my online quilting friends are also accomplished knitters and I found myself not only admiring their work, but wishing I could make the items they were making. Especially socks! My friends made some of the most fantastic socks!
So, in December 2009, My friend Shelly from Texas was kind enough to gift me with a book on knitting, some knitting needles, and two skeins of gorgeous 100% wool. As she said, I got her hooked on quilting, now she's returning the favor by helping me learn to knit. :)
Heavenly, don't you think? The idea is to knit myself a scarf. But the book first says to do a practice swatch to make sure you know what you're doing. OK, makes sense. I didn't want to use this lovely yarn for my practice piece, so I found I had a skein of acrylic/wool blend yarn in my sewing room (why? I have no idea!) so I used that to practice with.
Not too shabby, eh? It does have its problems though. I'm still working on getting my tension good. At this point, the loops on the knitting needle are incredibly tight. Gotta work on that. Also, the last stitch always has a huge loop on it, even though I'm very careful to keep the tension good on my first stitch when I start a new row.
To see a much bigger, more detailed picture, click here.
I'm really not sure what I'm doing wrong here, I guess I'll have to do a YouTube search to see if I can find any videos that address this. But in the mean time, I think I'm hooked. I've already found some lovely patterns online that I want to make, even a sweater! With lots of details! Holy moly, what have I gotten myself into? :) Gee, thanks Shelly. LOL!
OK, after consulting with my knitting friends, this is apparently a natural artifact of the last stitch. When I started the next row, that extra yarn was caught up in the first stitch, so it all looked OK. Yay! So I kept at it, and tonight I finished my practice piece!
Yay! It's not fantastic, but I can see my stitches becoming better and better until they're pretty much even at the end (which is at the top of this picture). Now I feel confident enough to make myself a scarf out of the pretty wool that Shelly sent me. Guess what I'm starting tonight? :)