hmmm... (boring)

soooo...this is more a paper related note for me than anything else... but the first instructional thing I found on knitting was written, and I couldn't work w/ that at all. admittedly, i probably read it twice and moved on. videos helped immensely. however, having learned the basic stitches and a little lingo, now reading some things makes more sense. granted there were pics accompanying what I was reading about (variations on stitches) but no video, no process. i was a little surprised, but i guess it's just a matter of now having more of a reference for the words. i did ultimately try it so in essence putting my own 'video' to the words, but the important thing is that somehow something changed... or maybe it was just who wrote the directiosn. who knows. just something noteworthy i guess... would be a li'l piagetian i think... or could still be vygotsky...not sure... li'l time to figure it out too - eek...

31 stitches the whole time!!

    yippee!! it worked! didn't drop any stitches. didn't gain any. rock on!!! tension consistency needs much work, sure, but one thing at a time. *grin*

experiments in knit/purl combinations

  (that pic's kinda blurry, huh - my bad. didn't notice on the phone, may change it later) doing some more experimenting. the far left section is just straight knitting. the middle section is a combination of knits and purls. the far right section is actually a combination of totally knitted rows, totally purled rows and some combo rows. learned a few things: that middle section actually needs more knits or purles on the edges to give it shape. it only looks like it has shape now cuz i stretched it out before i took the picture. and the pattern in the right section isn't all that discernable I think because i didn't do enough rows before i went back to the total knit/purl rows. ok i realize all this may mean nothing to the like 2 people (at best) who actually bother to read it, but i know what i mean. lol. and you can just walk away knowing that i experimented and learned.  had to give this to tgp since i used 'her' yarn. now i have to make her another something with the other yarn she picked out. she did the cast on and then said 'now you have to do the other part'. she said this one's going to be a blanket for her baby doll. i told her i'd make her a washcloth and she agreed to that. i'm going to try that diamond pattern again...

what now...

this is just some randomness i whipped up the other night. i wanted to see what K1 P2 (knit 1 purl 2) looked like so i did it for a bit, as usual, it went haywire after a while. i got it somewhat back on track then it went VERY haywire and I decided to just plain ol' knit 'til i ran out of yarn. it was all just practice anyway. li'l abstract, yes? probably use it to clean the bathroom ;) so next, i write a paper. and call it a day. actually, tomorrow i'll probably buy more yarn and keep practicing. it's actually fun. and in my head i actually have other patterns in mind, as in i wonder what this combination will produce or if i want it to look like this, what combination of knits & purls would i need to do. so that's kinda cool. i really do think i might possibly attempt to consider making some Christmas presents for folks - how's THAT for noncommital! *grin* anyway, i think i've gone thru a nice process here, beginning, middle and at least pseudo-end and as such here ends the required journal-esque-ness of this blog. tho i do still think i'll continue to document my progress as far as the hobby goes... if only to upload pics. we shall see...

tackling a pattern: take 2

Here's the second attempt. If you look from the bottom up, you can see how nicely it started out...I was being carful. I had even caught a few problems in the making and was able to avert them or correct them immediately. I went through the whole pattern once and was going to call it a night - and I should have... But then I decided that it'd be small but i'd go through the whole sequence one more time and just finish the piece. I was excited I guess that it had been going well... A few lines in bad things started to happen... I think it's because I was getting tired. I didn't feel like I was being less careful *sigh* but apparently I was. Soooo about halfway thru the sequence, I think, I decided just to finish up before I did too much more damage. I'm disappointed. I know, I know, I juuust started knitting like 5 minutes ago. And I'm cool w/ mistakes and what not, I'm really just bummed cuz the first part went ok then the crash and burn. I should quit while I was ahead - lol. But anyway, there it be. 

so much for that... ;)

it may be because i'm running on li'l sleep but i decided that perhaps a fresh start is in order. I liked the idea of just continuing to work on the same piece until finally I got it to work out. Thought it'd be cool to look at it when it's all done and be able to trace my experience attempting to follow the pattern, blah blah blah - HA. On second thought, how about I just start anew? Yes, let's do that. So, tomorrow night maybe, I'll start over. I'll go that much more slowly, I might have felt the groove a little sooner than I should have, or blinked to long and a stitch got away from me. No idea. But I'll try to go slower so I'll, hopefully, make fewer mistakes and maybe catch them sooner and be able to double back and fix them. I'd done another couple of rows before I quit tonight and even tho I'm watching everything I'm doing, I'd get to the end of the row and there was rogue stitch or two. So, I just have to be more careful and try to see what I'm doing. I think that somehow something's going on at the back of the needle that I'm just not noticing... in any event, i WILL NOT let this pattern beat me!!! lol

now lookie here...

so this is how this came to be - what follows are selections of an im conversation w/ a friend of mine re my latest endeavor... (coping and pasting is doing weird things, forgive the random indenting)

...but i'm no punk! gonna try the crazy one [pattern] ok it's not crazy... but i may be for deciding to do it after 2 weeks of 'knitting'

me - my project went terribly awry and i quit and started over. the second attempt also has some drama but i'm goign to keep going... and see if it can work itself out some kinda way.

   her - knitting?

          me: yeah

                 her - doing the little diamonds?

                 me: yeah

me: if i get good at this people could actually get christmas presents this year.

 

me: potholders...dish cloths...

  lol

  placemats

 her: nope mind is a sweater, olive green

  ;)

 me: HA

 her: start next week

 me: for your 50th birthday

 her: hahahaha

 me: and that's STILL if i start next week

8:49 PM i'm all about the 2D project

 her: ok - well i guess red dishcloths would be ok

  8:50 PM 

me: just updated blog w/ today's efforts
me: someone i REALLY like could get a blanket

 or someone having a baby

  yeah RIGHT!

  big plans...sooo not likely :(

me: REALLY? i casted on how many stitches? 31

  how many are there on the needle right now?41

  41

  my thingy birthed 10 stitches

 her: 31 became 41?

 me: yes

  yes

  yes

10:08 PM what in the world

 her: i think you need to review

 me: i can see where i LOST a couple

  but how on earth am i gaining them?

10:10 PM i mean i know there are mistakes in here. i just can't figure out what creates an extra stitch. that's what i need ti figure out.

10:11 PM 41

  shakes head

10:14 PM back to the drawing board. sorta. going to force this back to 31 and start over

10:15 PM her: lol

 me: but because i'm a lunatic, i'm not going to pick any of the far easier patterns i found. going to make this work darnit!@

  -@

10:16 PM mainly because the others are not that much more invovled than what i already did. trying to maxmize the 'learning' experience for the sake of the assignment, yeah, that's it

k i now have 31 stitches on the needle.

  or not

  wah!

  but i think that was just sleepy math

10:21 PM no, math was fine it was sleepy logic in determining the math necessary - duh *smacks forehead"

10:23 PM her: so is it right or wrong? i'm confused

 me: wrong

  finished doing the row that i thought would correct it. at which point i said there are 31. but then i counted. still too many as a result of faulty logic.

10:24 PM i have corrected the logic. now i must do the true corrected row and THEN i can go to bed. anal retentive/ocd/numbers obsessed people shouldn't knit

10:26 PM her: ha

10:29 PM me: dangit!

  32

  shoot!

  close enough to call it a night tho

so there goes that...some other thoughts - ncreasing stitches - ok so i just saw one but i saw it just too late to go back and fix it. i think that when i put the needle thru i wasn't paying attention and put it thru the wrong area. i could tell becuase a stitch was the wrong color (multi color yarn  and a yellow stitch randomly in the middle of some green stitchs). it was my 4th straight knitted row before i'm supposed to start the patter so problematic but minorly so. moving on to the next thing has helped me see the flaws in the prev steps i didn't notice, so didn't worry about enough to remedy then.

and I've decided that i'm not going to start over (did I say that already?) i'm just going to keep going. if need be i'll do a few plain rows and attempt to start the pattern again.it can be practice for when i make a blanket since that'd mean having a ton of knitting in my hands.

tackling a pattern

Alrighty... so i got some new yarn - again picked out by minime. I found a pattern for a dish cloth and decided to go with it. It's a little involved, but hey, it's all numbers right? Riiiight... Well, it started off alright - cast on, knit 4 rows. Easy peasy. There's a note that each row starts and ends w/ 3 knit stitches. Ok no problem. Then the madness begins: 

Row 1: k1 *p1 k9 p1 k1 (repeat from *) No problem. First, knit three, then knit one, purl one, knit nine, purl one, knit one, back to purl 1 etc... then knit 3, next row. No problem. Well until the row where I forgot to start w/the three knitted stitches. Ok... what now... I couldn't take them off cuz at that moment I couldn't quite do it in reverse. So I just knitted the rest of the row, cast(ed)-off and tried again. First 2 pics after the ball of yarn are that first attempt. Oh yeah, I also learned that it's possible for additional stitches to spontaneously appear on the needle... at some point I realized that I was ending up w/ more than 3 stitches remaining after I did the pattern but I could swear I did the correct initial number of stitches...

Tried again... more fun. Somehow the pattern went all awry again. This time I had stitches disappear as well as appear. Started w/ 31, at one point had only 30 and at another had 34. Spontaneous de/regeneration of stitches. Ultimately it should have a diamondesque pattern formed by the switches between knitting & purling. There are 7 rows each w/ a diff pattern then they're done in reverse and then the whole set is repeated. You can kiiinda see in the second set of pics that there's definitely some signs of a pattern there... I've decided to just keep going w/ this one instead of starting over. Hopefully at least for the rest of it, it might look like something - we'll see.

Learned a li'l of how to read a pattern. This one didn't involve too much:

k - knit

p - purl

kx (where x is a number) - knit x  stitches

px (where x is a number) - purl x stitches

RS - right side

CO - cast off

(kx, py)  z times (where x,  y, z are numbers) - repeat the sequence in the parentheses z times

* - in this pattern it designated the beginning of a repeated section of a row.

Hmmm... the tricky thing is going to be making sure that whenever I stop, I actually know what row I did last. Before I wasn't doing anything special so I could just put it down and pick it up and keep it moving. And at the moment since it's kinda botched I'm just going to knit a few rows and start again w/ the beginning of the pattern. But given that I won't likely have multiple hours at a stretch to dedicate I'll have to come up w/ something. maybe just make a note on the paper I wrote the pattern down on... we'll see.

and now the purl

li'l blurry, but there it is...

watched the purling video...ah yes, slightly different placement and order of the steps but not terribly different. didn't take nearly as long to get past the initial awkward stage. 

notes in progress...

purling - first stitch of the row not going so well...overall seems looser than knitting, not sure if it's me or the nature of the purl ...rewatched the vid - fixed the 1st stitch problem...i gotta find a way to function closer to the tips of the needles...was going to cast off. but started w/ a purl and was like uhhh... yeah, this isn't going to work...had to do a whole nother row...although based on the description that should actually work...ooohhh it is just that awkward... tho i could cheat i guess and just knit it...nah, i'll give it a shot...

ok awkward was a total understatement (re: purl bind-off/cast-off) sheesh!! seriously painful for a while there - no, literally! was finally getting it go go a little (and i mean little) more smoothly there at the with a few stitches remaining. 

Yay - a Quadrilateral!!

There ya go and there ya have it, folks. A square-esque knitted figure. Who hoo. Now onto purling. I seem to recall from watching a video earlier in the process that it's just a matter of  where/how you hold the needles & yarn. So, I'm hoping that it'll just be a matter of adjusting how what I was doing and thereby avoiding the very initial awkwardness... But we'll see I suppose. 

a work in progress

just a few pics... still just practicing. it's going more smoothly, tho some stitches are tighter than others so it's kinda uneven at points. i think the multi-colored yarn covers a multitude of sins. I think i might just keep going w/ this until this ball of yarn runs out. it was a little ball of yarn so it won't take much longer. at which point i'll have...a blanket for a  hampster maybe? lol we'll see. at some point i have to start thinking abou this experience in terms of learning theories so i can come up w/ that 5-6 page paper due on the 7th... i am at some moments, but i'm trying to hold off on much until i'm closer to done.  in due time... in due time...

lookie what i made!

start to finish: long-tail cast-on, basic knit stitch, basic cast-off. i made somethin, yay! what did i make? err...umm...a rectangle! it appears that i skipped a stitch in there somwhere, but only one. now what made it almost magically come together this time around? no idea. i think i haven't done anything for a few days. maybe it just needed some time to marinate. lol - or incubate perhaps... who knows. in any event, progress is being made.  yay. and uh once it's just kinda working it's pretty cool. not going to jump headlong into the purl yet. maybe in a few days tho instead of a couple weeks. if i'd had another hour or so to spend on this tonight i coulda had a potholder. *grin*

my last few efforts were done w/ the kid's shorter needles. maybe tomorrow i'll whip the long ones back out and see how well i handle them. maybe try something longer. still not ready to do it in public where people may get hurt (ie the train). haha

update...

alrighty... so I haven't said much, but it doesn't mean i haven't still been practicing. decided to do more stitches at a time so I have a slightly longer piece of knitted nothing. and then I did a little one to try casting-off - the last row of a piece. it took me a few tries to figure that out. i've still just been watching videos from the same site and then trying it. i'd typically watch it a few times, then try it, then when it didn't work, watch some more, then try it. i did try to do it along w/ the video once or twice but of course she was going faster than me and i couldn't keep up. what would be handy would be a voice activated player so that i could tell it to pause every few seconds to compare hand placement and such. using both hands to knit made it a tad difficult (tho not impossible actually) to pause it periodically. anyway, i have a few more pics i have to upload. i still have about a month, and i think i'm going to spend that practicing. i think i've gotten enough of a handle on the basic mechanics, but i need to work on making it work smoothly and being consistent w/ the stitches. if i can manage to knit a few rows that look all neat and purdy, that'll be cool. if i can do that in the next couple of weeks, then i'll switch to the purl stitch which just changes the placement of the yarn. Hopefully it's a little easier to get that one. If there's time, i'll try somehing that involves a combination of the two, but i'm not altogether sure that's likely... but we shall see...

challenges

* holding on...

> keeping a tight enough hold on the yarn

>holding the stitches on the right needle in place

>hands not slipping all over the place (those needles are tres slippery, man! ;) )

* i always manage to miss a stitch somewhere along the line

* getting the left needle into and out of the stitch w/out pulling it too loose

* working too close to the tip of the top of the needle > everything slides off

sheesh! so much to work on - whew...

practice practic practice

not much to report... the first method of knitting i tried was the continental method which is holding the yarn in your left hand. needle w/ work on it starts in the left hand and the knitting moves it to the right needle, then you switch. i decided to take a look at the English method and for it, you hold the yarn w/ the right hand. It kinda seems a little easier, but I haven't given up on the first yet. So, currently I'm in a bit of a holding pattern, just working on the actual knit stitch for now.  havne't yet made my way to that darn glossary yet...maybe this weekend... we shall see. 

it ain't pretty...but it's progress...

Ok, so I've progressed from casting-on to actually "knitting", not to be confused w/ purling which is a whole different ballgame and next on the list. Incidentally, all the cast-ons that I worked on (all 3) involved only 1 needle. Nice way to start and totally unintentional. They just happened to be the first ones on the page. There are actually many, many more options. But learning them is beyond the scope of my assignment...Had I started in January - maybe. But, truth be told, I might could get into this...Noooo, not cuz I'm old! :P I think it's my sliiiiiiight OCD tendency (as yet un clinically diagnosed ;) )that both likes it and will be driven crazy by it... but I digress. Ummm... Yeah, so I've now tried going from the cast-on to actually knitting a couple of rows... It ain't pretty, but it's progress nonetheless. I also know that currently my technique is not such that I need to be trying this on the train yet unless I have a seat to myself. It's all fun and games til someone loses an eye... Tho...I could "borrow" my kid's shorter needles... hmmm.... Yeah, clearly I didn't do enough research before hand. But hey, what's life if not a trial and error process? Did I have ANY clue what a beginning knitter should look for in needles? Nope. But it's all good.  Anyway, working on knitting for another day or two. Then purling perhaps. Then I need to get back to that glossary so I know what comes next and how to read a pattern and what not so I can try to make something. While I do think there's TONS to actually learn, I'm not trying for all of it at the moment. For now - casting-on, knitting, purling, casting-off, terminology, reading a pattern and then making something. Although the "making something" doesn't actually have to come last in the process. Once I can cast-on, knit & cast-off, I could make something. But I wanna know the rest anyway. Ok, going to have at it a li'l more. I do have some pics of today's efforts that I'll upload tomorrow... Fun times.

needles, yarn & cast-ons

After leaving Walmart having forgotten knitting supplies, I doubled back (no easy feat mind you) and got needles & yarn for myself and the munchkin. Why? Cuz she decided she wanted to learn to knit too. Short gold needles, pink/purple/white yarn for her. Long, grey needles, red/pink/white yarn for me (picked out by TGP).

Awww learning together ain't that sweet... Anyhoo. Earlier today (this morn and a li'l after I got home) I checked out a couple other cast-ons. The Single and the...eh I forget the name. Anyway, I taught Tyler the single. She actually managed to get the hang of it. I was impressed. Granted she's five and after a bit she decided that there were other things she could do with yarn and knitting needles, and so be it. I ain't mad at her. But at this rate it's going to take a while for her to get to and through the sweater she decided she wants to make her grandmother...

After she lost interest, I sat there for a while longer w/ my practice piece of thread cycling thru the different cast-ons (have I mentioned yet that that's basically how you make the first row? That's what it is.) Do it til the yarn runs out, admire it, take a pic, pull it off and start over... I think I've got those three down enough. Next? I took a quick look at a Knitting Glossary and it was frightening. I'm trying to decide if I want to proceed by just trying to master individual skills or just pick a pattern and use that as my base. We'll see...

The goal? The plan?

The goal is ultimately to knit something, a square perhaps (that I'll pass off as a potholder). Or perhaps a rectangle (that I will conveniently call a scarf...for an infant maybe, but a scarf nonetheless).

I actually do want to try to learn more than just one way to start, proceed and finish. That'd be easy and hey, life being what it is, that may be what I end up doing, but what fun is that? Um did I just allude to this being fun? Well, yes, yes indeed I did... Anyway, start by learning some various things separtately, then put them together and see what happens. It's vague, but a plan nonetheless. Frankly I don't yet know enough to put together much more of a "curriculum" than that. Definitely making it up as I go along.