Learn to knit

I learned how to bind off my work yesterday, and practiced it on my swatch. It turned out okay. My next lesson: decreasing and increasing…

I’ve been combining my knit rows and my purl rows now, to make stockinette stitches. Hey,this is fun!

...the purl stitch now. I am still very slow, but impressed by the fact that I’m knitting at all! I dropped a stitch on my swatch, and do not yet know how to fix this, but that lesson is coming up pretty soon in the book.

I am glad that my instruction book teaches both English and Continental methods. Thankfully, the continental style comes easily to me… but with the English method, I am all thumbs! :)

and my stitches are finally loose enough to work into comfortably. I am very slow, but I suppose that speed comes with practice. I am thrilled to be finally knitting! Now that I have knitted a swatch of the “garter stitch”, my next lesson will be the purl stitch.

I’ve figured out how to cast on, and I’ve made my first couple of rows of knit stitches. But I can barely get my needle into the stitches to work them; my stitches are just too tight! Does tension get better with practice? Am I doing something wrong? (I’m using the continental method, if that makes a difference.)

I recently discovered that The Knitting Guild Association offers distance courses in knitting, for beginners through to more advanced levels. Has anyone studied through them, and if so, how were the courses?