something new

One of my new years resolutions, as you may have read in my last post, is to learn to knit and to knit well by the end of the year. On Thursday I happily found myself truly in between hooky or yarny projects. I decided now was as good as time as any to start learning something new 🙂

I found the knitting needles I’ve had for some time, some acrylic DK yarn and settled down with various online tutorials.

It did not go well.

Not that I was expecting it too really. But seriously, I was at a total loss, for someone who uses a hook like it’s an extension of her hand, knitting needles were a nightmare in every way.

Yesterday, I popped into my local yarn shop and had a chat with the lovely lady who runs it and she gave some really excellent simple advice and last night it all turned around!

She pointed out a few helpful books and I picked one up, it is called Kids Learn To Knit by Lucinda Guy & Francois Hall. Obviously it is aimed at children but that just means bright and colourful and wonderfully simple – and I’ll be able to use it with Emma when she’s older!

She had also suggested I start out on nice big needles with a chunky yarn until I was comfortable with the stitches. So I picked up some 8mm needles to use instead of 4mm ones I had been struggling with. This really worked for me and it wasn’t long until I was finally comfortable with the knit stitch. Woohoo!

Oh and take a look at my colourful oversized needles 🙂 I love them!

I decided I wanted to move on to making something using just that stitch to practice it, and to try out the smaller needles again. The first thing that came to mind was a dish cloth pattern I had seen over on Diary of a Stay at Home Mom, I went to have a look and as luck would have it a knit stitch was pretty much all I needed and now I’ve got that the other little bits came fairly easily.

This is how far I’ve got and I’m hoping to have it finished before I go to bed tonight. If you are a knitter and would like the pattern the lovely Sandra has posted it in her blog here.

I’m so excited to be doing something new! I’m really enjoying knitting the dish cloth and I’ve only dropped one little stitch so far (I don’t think you can spot it?!) which I really don’t think is too bad considering on Thursday night I was lucky to keep a single stitch on the needles! 🙂

Is anyone else trying anything new for the new year?