More Knitting Talk, with Pictures!

Check it out! This is the beginning of my first ever knitted scarf. There are a total of four patterns in this scarf, and you can see that I have three done already (the four are repeated four times, of course, to make it longer). I have started the fourth pattern, but I only have a couple of rows done, so you can't really see that yet. But aren't the other three cool?

This is the basket weave pattern, which was the first one I had to do. It's really easy, thankfully, and it came out well. There are a couple of minor errors in it, but this scarf is just for me, and I can live with them. :) And since it's my first real knitting project, I can live with a couple of mistakes. I kept thinking when I was doing this part that I would kind of like a sweater in this pattern - at least a sweater that had this for the front - maybe not the whole thing. But I'm not up to sweaters yet, so who knows what I'll end up making when I get ready for that.

This is the mesh stitch, which is the part that gave me the most trouble. Let's just say that I got a lot of practice at tearing out rows and picking stitches back up (which isn't all that easy when you're new to the whole knitting thing). There are mistakes in here, too - I had to completely fudge the last row to get back to the right number of stitches. But whatever, I wasn't tearing it out again, and like I said - this is for me, so I don't really care all that much if there are mistakes. Here's hoping that this section gets easier when I do it the second, third and fourth times, though, or I may just shoot someone.

This is the section I did last night - it's called sugar cubes. This one would make a cute sweater, too, although I don't know if I'd want to wear it - it might be too cute as a sweater. I don't know. Anyway, it was easy, and I don't think I made any mistakes in this at all! Or at least no major ones, and none that are even visible. So that's good.

The next section is called seed stitch, which is just knitting one stitch and then purling the next, and reversing that on the next row. It'll be easy, too, I hope. As long as I don't lose track of when to do which stitch.

Which reminds me, I totally learned something about this whole process from my Mother. I remember that when she was knitting a difficult pattern, or at least one where the rows were all different, she had a notebook that she would keep next to her, and she'd mark down rows as she finished them. Guess what I'm doing now? You better believe I'm writing them down, or I'd never remember what I just did, or where I left off the day before when I pick it up again. So, thanks Mom!

I'm really enjoying this whole knitting thing (like you couldn't tell). I plan on working on this and that baby blanket I've been making forever at the same time, so that I can get them both done soon (soon, I swear, so that baby has her blanket before it gets cold again). Once I have both the baby blanket and my scarf done, I'm going to try to make a sweater next, I think. I found a nice, easy looking pattern online that I want to try. We'll see. It'll be a while before I get these done, but I'll be working on the sweater by October, I hope.

Oh, and I'll get off the knitting topic long enough to say - I weighed myself this morning. I don't really have any idea what I weighed before I stopped snacking so much at work, but this morning I weighed about six pounds less than I would have expected to. Woo! This new minimal snacking at work habit is one I want to keep up.