Learning to Knit

A lady from my church came and taught our 14-15 year-old girls the basics of knitting.  I had fun practicing my skills on this sampler made from a small ball of yarn she gave us.

At the beginning, we were all just straight knitting. I finally learned how to cast on correctly.  It's easy; I had just forgotten how.  The second part is stockinette stitch, (k 1 row, p 1 row) but she said I purl wrong, as evidenced by the little twists in the stitches. 

The bulging part is from practicing increasing, and later decreasing. We did this at random intervals, so it's kind of an odd shape.  I learned what YO does (yarn over) vs. stitching a stitch twice in either the front or the back.  You can see that I got my purling right, as the stitches themselves are nice and straight.

After that I practiced a little ribbing (k2, p2).

That was followed by "quilt squares" blocked out by changing stitches at regular intervals, and then some more plain knitting for contrast.

Lastly, I decided to try cables.  My first attempt was not very good, so I went to "Knitting for Dummies"  to remember the steps.  My cable is a little loose at the edges.  I need a knitter to tell me how to solve that.

I have not blocked this piece since it is just a sample, but I did finish with more knitting rows and binding off.  I dropped one stitch and got a big hole right at the end, but overall it's not too bad.


Now I want to start a project, something small but interesting.  I did find this little gem: it has some fun ideas. 

I'll probably look around more locally, but the following book is available on Amazon.com.  It's more advanced than me, I know.