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Diary of a Beginning Knitter
by Amy Leibrock

My desire to knit has been brewing for about a decade, but it was only two winters ago that I bought my first ball of yarn–a thick, warm, hunter grren wool. A coworker, who has knitted her entire life cast it onto chunky needles for me, showed me hoe to do a knit stich, and sent me on my way to make a scarf. I made it too wide and ran out of yarn before it was long enough. Frustrated, I stashed the unfinished product in a closet. The following year, I was determined to try knitting again–this time with the help of a pro at my local yarn shop. In seven weeks, I went from novice to knitter.

December 2: First Stiches
The yarn shop is small, so class is held around a folding table in the back. Linda, our teacher and owner of the shop, gave us cream-colored acrylic yarn to work with. She says it's easier to see what you're doing with light-colored yarn. But we also got to pick out alpaca yarn for our first project–a hat. I chose my favorite color, a soft orange.

We started with the slip knot, which immediately confused me. I feel as if I'll never be able to do it without a diagram. Next, Linda taught us how to cast on, which seemed even more strange to me. My fingers kept getting in the way, and my needles kept sliding to the floor. Frustrated sighs and groans were also coming from my four classmates.

Linda soldiered on and taught us the knit stitch next. I was still all thumbs, but the motion slowly came back to me from last winter, and I thought of the unfinished scarf languishing in my closet.

December 5: Subway Inspiration
Today I saw a woman knitting while standing up (standing up!) on thw subway, and I coulsn't take my eyes off her nimnble fingers. I took it as a challenge and went straight home to do my "homework," which was to cast on and knit 12 rows. I figured out the slip knot, but the cast-on had be baffled. I felt stuck, but I overcame it and went on to the knitting part, which I'm really starting to like.

December 9: Show and Tell
Before calss, my classmates and I cmopared out homework. Our swatches were as different as we are. Lisa had a wide, hefty sample that started out the right width but ballooned to almost twice the width it's supposed to be. Roberta's was very loose–something she called up to the way her grandmother taught her when she was a child. Katie's and Nelda's looked perfect, with clean edges and even rows, unlike mine which had lumpy edges and a few odd-looking stitches. But, all in all, we were proud of our work, which is why our jaws dropped when the first thing Linda told us to do was to rip out all our stitches.

Linda set me straight on casting on. I've been pulling the yarn tight in the wrong places so my tension was way off. I'm floored by how quickly she can figure out our mistakes–it's second nature to her.

Tonight's lesson was purling. Linda said that we now know the basics to make every stitch, which I find hard to believe since we still have five classes to go. But I already feel much more confident than I did a few weeks ago. She showed us how to do stockinetter, garter, and ribbing, and soon enough we were amazing ourselves by making different patterns. Our homework is to practive more of the same. I'm dying to start working on my hat.

December 16: Skipping Ahead
This past weekend, I jumped ahead and made my first knitted gift–a scarf for my grandmother. I came across a beginner kit with boucle and eyelash yarn, and I couldn't resist. I ended up adding and dropping stitches and accidentally knitting a yarn tail into the piece. But the yarn itself is so busy that it covered up my mistakes.

I felt a little sheepish for teaching myself to bind off the scarf, but in class tonight Nelda wore a scarf she had made, and Lisa showed us pictures of a baby blanket she'd made for a gift. I guess I'm not as advanced as I thought.

We learned how to add a second color tonight. Our homework is to knit a swatch with our alpaca yarn to test our gauge for the hat project. Finally!

January 6: The Pizza Mistake
I made a mysterious mistake in my swatch this week, so I showed Linda. While working at home, I laid down my knitting to pay the pizza delivery man. I worked on it later that evening and ended up with a sort of "step" in the middle row. Linda said that when I picked p my work after dinner, I started knitting when I should have been purling. Her solution was to write "I am knitting" and "I am purling" on different sides of an index card and leave it on my work when I am interrupted.

Linda showed us how to measure gauge, and finally, after three weeks of knitting up and ripping out, we started on our hats. I had to cast on 101 stitches, which took at least half an hour, but I am happy just to be working on something that I'm not going to have to unravel later.

January 13: Slow Progress
I'm way behind on my hat. This is the point where normally I would stash my project in a closet and forget avout it for a few years. But then I tell myself that that's why' I'm taking a class–to motivate me to actually finich a project.

When I got to class, everyone was measuring their hats to their heads and figuring out how much farther they had to go before they started decreasing. Linda said I didn't have enough yet to even measure.

January 20: Jealousy
I've already started buying knitting magazines and planning future projects, but I know I'm getting ahead of myself. I am still behind on my hat, so I spent tonight's class knitting. Everyone else got to sew up their hats. They looked great, and I'm a little jealous.

January 27: (Almost) Ready to Wear
I finally finished knitting my hat this week, so in class Linda helped me sew it up. I had a little yarn left, and she suggested I make a pom-pom, which I did. It was so satisfying to finally put the hat on my head! But Linda says we have to wash them first in order to block them, so I have to wait a few more days before I actually get to wear it.

February 2: Laundry Lessons
I was knitting at the laudromat tonight when a woman asked if she could watch me. She said she'd tried knitting before but couldn't quite figure it out. As I showed her how to knit and purl, I realized that I've actually become a real knitter–and it was easy. I think it's time to finish that scarf in the closet.