In Which I Start a Knitting Project...

Even though I dislike Red Heart yarn, their little 'how to' books are actually very useful. They have step by step color illustrations for many of the stitches, and if they don't, they usually have enough details that you can figure it out. They also will have a few beginner patterns, like hats, scarves, or baby blankets, included in the booklet - which is pretty nice when you consider that a lot of pattern books are pretty expensive.

Anywho, on Saturday, after we had finished moving for the day, I decided that I had had enough practice work and that it was time to start a real project rather than just keep knitting aimlessly. I chose a hat pattern out of the Red Heart 'how to knit' book, pulled out some purple Vanna's Choice yarn I'd had for ages, found the appropriate knitting needles, and went to town.

However, the hat starts off with a K1P1 rib - but it's not a normal K1P1, it's K1*K1P1*until the end of the row and the very last two stitches are K1K1 again. So basically it's K1K1P1K1P1K1P1K1K1 (if that makes any sense) Unfortunately I didn't realize that at first, so I had to rip everything out, start over again... and then I began to loose track of what stitch was which and what I had just done... was it a knit stitch? Or a purl? I ripped everything out and then started again, only to do three rows and notice that the ribbing wasn't looking like it was supposed to... so the hat was ripped apart for a third time.

In between all of this I was sending texts to Contessa complaining about what was going on, and saying that I didn't understand how knitters remembered what stitch they had done and etc etc etc. (I imagine most knitters don't have a TV running in the background when they are learning to knit) She reassured me that I would eventually figure it out on my own... and y'know what? She was right.

The next day I started the project over again and realized that when I purled the yarn looped one way, and when I knitted it looped a different way. Now that I recognize how the stitches look next to each other, instead of one row of this, one row of that, like what I was doing with all that practice stuff, the knitting is going much better (except for one stitch, which got twisted somehow, but I'm not about to start over again!)

(I have a few more rows than this now)