So, anyway...

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.