So, anyway...

[tencrush]

I'm still on holiday in France and, as you do when you go on holiday, I have decided to take up knitting. (I was going to watch the rest of season one of Torchwood but my laptop's getting a bit too hot to deal with it.)

SO... yes, knitting. It transpires that, even though I've done it before, I'm pretty darned awful at it. Advice required.

• I keep randomly gaining and losing stitches. I don't drop them or anything, I don't create huge gaping holes in the knitting, I'll just suddenly find myself with one stitch less or two more than I had before. I don't really understand why, especially the losing business. I know why I gain them, I think it's because I stick the needle in too low when I knit and end up with two kind of weird loops which I assume on the way back are both stitches. But I don't get why I'm losing them.


• The sides are AWFUL. I've been told and read that I'm supposed to stick the needle in from right to left and transfer the first stitch without actually knitting it. I've been doing this and I'm just ending up with about a 4-stitch wide tangled mess on either side of my knitting. And it's not like I do things really haphazardly, I'm really anal and tidy when it comes to any sort of yarn-related hobby.


• Speaking of which, the whole thing really is just more or less a mess. Does this get better with time? I think part of the problem is that I don't quite understand which part of the knitting I'm supposed to be keeping tight in order to achieve a uniform effect. Also, the neater I try to do it, the tighter everything becomes and eventually I can't even get my needle in anymore.


• Why can I purl but not knit?


• Can anyone recommend what wool I should be using taking into consideration the fact that I am obviously special needs and cannot cope with wool unravelling into separate strands. I end up knitting 4 of the 6 strands, creating a little loop out of the other two and then eventually pulling out the finished result in frustration and starting over.

I am giving the knitting until the end of this holiday and if it doesn't improve I will take the needles and fold them in half very, very happily, so that they fit in the bin.

Comments

[tencrush]

:o THANK YOU SO MUCH, that was brilliant.

You looked great.

[virginhuntress.livejournal.com]

Awww, thanks babe.

You have to be patient. Knitting is like, half patience and half skill, which is why it took me over two YEARS to get my hands right. I would get frustrated, leave and then not pick it up again for months. I would be rusty again and well, you can see how vicious a cycle that is.

Once I finally said "fuck it" and just let myself do it every day, I was golden in two months or so.

Trick is, don't start a big project yet. First perfect your casting on. Do that about a HUNDRED times until you feel your first row is what you want it to be. Then, pull it apart again, cast on and do about 6-10 rows. Look at it, and see what you did and figure out how to improve. Pull it apart, do it again.

It's so frustrating, but then all of a sudden, you've got it and your hands are FLYING. I've since learned how to make hats (using four double pointed needles) and how to knit using circular needles.

Next on my list is how to cable (using a cabling hook), but if you'll notice... it hasn't happened yet. I know it's going to take a WHILE to learn and right now I don't have the time or the patience.

Don't give up, you'll be great, hon. You won't be a master by the end of holiday, but relax, don't get so frustrated and you'll get much better every day.

Good luck, and if there's any other video you need, I'll be glad to make them. It was fun to share something like that with a friend. :D

[off_coloratura]

IAWTC. This is exactly what I did when I was starting. Just trying one bit, ripping out, and practicing again.

I said somewhere, once I'd finished my first scarf, that if you counted just the sheer knitting I'd done (and not all the ripping back) I had actually knit about three or four scarves. That is the Way Of Knitting. Keep going, be forgiving with yourself and you'll get there!

(Oh, and cables are just like ribs, only you swap places with the stitches and knit across, and voila! Cable! I held off of them for ages because I thought they'd be totally hard, and they are my favorite thing now, because they're so simple and they look so complicated. The only challenge is paying attention to whether you're making the ribs cross right over left or left over right. But they are FUN.)