First knitting post from beginner knitter

thegiddystitcher, 10 months ago

Not worth posting, my bum! These look great! I love the colour combo too where you’ve picked out that dark blue from the variegated and run with it, really makes it feel like a designed set and not just a “well I had this one ball of yarn…” thing. And cables! I know experienced knitters who shy away from cables! Also congrats on being bistitchual now! I’m using too many exclamation marks because it’s early in the morning and I’m excited, just roll with it.

Since we’re apparently sharing our own newb tales in this thread too, here’s mine:

I learned from illustrations in a blog post and must have misinterpreted them massively because I spent the first month knitting everything through the back loop. Turns out if you do that consistently everything sort of looks right, so I never noticed until eventually watching a video and realising she did it different and then looking up why that might be. No wonder I hated purling so much though! 😂

kurobita, 10 months ago

Thank you! I wanted to do the whole thing in the variegated yarn, but my mom (an avid knitter since she was 6yo) advised me that when the stitch is more ‘complex’ it looks best done in a solid color, so I got another skein, and I love teal, so there’s that.

I didn’t know there were different styles of knitting until I started watching youtube tutorials. Some made sense with what I have learned from my mom (that I now know is called continental) but others looked soooo weird.

thegiddystitcher, 10 months ago

Aha! Yes mom definitely knows what she’s talking about 😄 The more complex the stitch pattern the more solid the colourway is definitely a good rule to live by, although in fairness a lot of people love to use variegated for everything even if the stitch pattern does ultimately get a bit lost.

It’s one of those personal preference things you’ll end up just experimenting with here and there. I was so afraid of making the “wrong” yarn choice I stuck to entirely solids for probably a year haha, don’t be like me, it’s not that big a deal.

gina, 10 months ago

I also agree with your mom. It’s really disappointing to spend a lot of time on a complex pattern and have your neat stitching drowned out by the variegation.

One pattern I do really like for variegated yarn is linen stitch. It’s only slightly more complicated than stockinette, but I find that the slipped stitches actually help to enhance the variegation instead of fighting with it. Instead of color streaks you get something closer to confetti or cookie sprinkles.

kurobita, 10 months ago

Linen stitch looks cute, I’ll have to give it a try some time. Also seems it’d be good for combining two colors of yarn: one variegated and one solid. That’d be too advanced for me now, but I’ll certainly keep this in mind for a future project, thanks! :)

gina, 10 months ago

A solid + variegated mix for linen stitch would be really lovely. I think I’ve seen this done with a solid black and a very colorful variegated yarn and it gave almost a stained glass effect.

And do what you’re comfortable with, but I’d say if you’re doing cables you’re more advanced than you think :).

AzuleBlade, 10 months ago

Looks great, keep it up!

Nepenthe, 10 months ago

I don't know why, but the colors on that pompom make the whole thing unusually cute.

You haven't missed anything. I seem to always see each side saying the other is more difficult (it's crochet, crochet is more difficult), but they really just both require sufficient stubbornness. I've mainly stuck with toys/amigurumi, and I'm only just in the very baby stages of branching into anything wearable myself, so here's hoping for minimal frustration. Or at least for mistakes horrible enough to be funny.

kurobita, 10 months ago

I find crochet requires a lot more of my mental focus than knitting. I can follow a conversation or watch a tv show while knitting, but not so much when I crochet and I have to count stitches and what not. Markers were a godsend.

bornforleaving, 10 months ago

I feel like one is left brain and one is right brain 🤣 obligatory I’m a knitter, but I tried crochet recently and how the hell do you even know where you are? Like knitting you can count and it’s super concrete and crochet just feels like a confusing free for all lmao.

(And I know if I put more time into it maybe I’d catch on and knitting probably felt the same when I started blaahblah)

Nepenthe, 10 months ago

Oh, for sure, I was in tears my first crochet project because I had no idea what a stitch even looked like in order to tell where the needle was supposed to go, and the guy in the tutorial kept covering it with his hands as he worked. It was awful.

With knitting, it's just..always on the needle. With crochet, you have to be able to tell different things apart from two different angles and for a beginner, the whole thing's bull.

There are multiple ways to move onto the next round, with different favorites for ease of use or a prettier look, but the most-used imo seems to be the one where everything is made in an upwards spiraling fashion, making physical stitch counts worthless until you've finished a row you may not remember the beginning of.

For these reasons, markers are god. Far more so than my experience with knitting. Losing my place on this row or not being able to see some important point on the previous just leaves me frogging back til the count matches some definite point, and that could be an hour of lost work.

Fortunately, I wanted to make a little buddy triceratops more than I wanted to admit anything beat me ever. (Really, there are just very few good knitting patterns for toys, so I had no other option)

bornforleaving, 10 months ago

I actually was meandering through some crochet tutorials recently and saw the tips about stitch markers and I definitely think that would make a huge difference! When I pick it up again I will try that.

I mostly wanted to crochet granny squares and make blankets like my gramma did…and be able to make certain other things WAY faster than knitting allows. We will see if I can catch on eventually, haha.

StillPaisleyCat, 10 months ago

I agree, stitch markers are the way to go with crochet.

I saw some bizarre question/comment elsewhere recently along the lines of “Why is it so much easier to learn crochet than knitting?”

I goggled actually.

My very English nana was determined that I I learn both as young child.

The knitting stuck. Even her wide range of cats-cradle cast-ons seemed deeply imprinted so I could figure them out from books later.

Crochet? Anything beyond the foundation chain seemed unfathomable. At least it was until I was sick enough that I didn’t want to risk my knitting projects and just hacked away at crochet until it finally made sense.

By the way, Sirdar had decent animal knitting patterns for its Countrytime DK yarn at one point. There was a nativity scene to knit with the obligatory farm animal patterns, but I also vaguely recall a Noah’s ark pattern set as well. The nativity one is still in print and available at some Sirdar vendors. I have this one and have had good results with the patterns.

Alan Dart is offering a slightly different Noah’s Ark set also for DK. It covers many of the popular animals, but I haven’t ever tried it myself.

Nepenthe, 10 months ago

Ooooh, thank you so much for the site. I'm going to be browsing this for a while, these are adorable!

StillPaisleyCat, 10 months ago

You’re very welcome.

I haven’t tried these myself, as I’m doing more crochet for that kind of thing at this point, but they look promising.

thegiddystitcher, 10 months ago

I’m gonna get downvoted and possibly driven out as moderator for this but…I also think crochet is way easier to learn than knitting. And I say that as someone who learned knitting first!

With knitting, you’ve got to learn casting on, knit stitch and casting off to make even the most basic of thing. And then you introduce purling, and now increases are easy enough except there’s a bajillion ways to do them and decreases are completely different depending on direction, and omg what is going on.

With crochet you learn how to make a chain, and you have all the skills you’re gonna need. Every stitch is a variation on the same few movements, most of them only differ in terms of where you insert your hook and how many yarnovers you do.

Probably a controversial take but I stand by it! 😄

StillPaisleyCat, 10 months ago

I understand the perspective, but as someone who learned both as a child at her nana’s elbow, getting started with knitting and making my first scarf worked, my first granny square was an exercise in frustration.

But as an adult with good book resources (and now videos one can repeat endlessly), I can see how much easier it is to shape and form interesting 3D garments and objects in crochet as well as make complex patterns and textures.

Emotional_Series7814, 10 months ago

Seconding. Learned to knit poorly with my grandmother, and crochet was very hard to figure out. All the videos I watched did not work out because the tutorial maker’s hands kept blocking what I needed to see. Maybe I should look back into crochet again.

StillPaisleyCat, 10 months ago

Once I figured it out, I found crochet to be great, but I spent a good while on Afghan crochet as a bridge.

Finding a really good instruction book with LOTS of intermediate diagrams for each of the major stitched seemed essential. Then of course there were zillions of samples to be made before anything in a project was possible.

bornforleaving, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

I recently stumbled across a crochet tutorial that really hyped the stitch markers and I definitely think it would help make things more concrete for me. I will try this method when I pick it up again, maybe in the winter. I mostly wanted to learn because of the granny square projects and how much faster it is then knitting for some things. We will see if I can figure it out, I guess 😅

(Edit: lemmy shit the bed and said my comment couldn’t be posted so I tried again and apparently it posted both. Whoops)

gina, 10 months ago

Those look great! Your cables especially are very neat. I think I spent like my first 6 months knitting twisting my stitches until some kind soul straightened me out.

Nepenthe, 10 months ago

Ugh. Is that kind soul still in this world? I keep having to google the matter and squint at it for prolonged periods, and something about the difference has never quite clicked with me. The terminology, maybe. "This leg has to go on this side," and all my brain does is verify that there are indeed two legs and a hole in the middle. Good job, Brain! 👍

Flughoernchen, 10 months ago

Which style are you knitting? Because I think it’s pretty easy to tell in Continental without the need of having visuals. Should apply to throwing as well, but not sure about that so I’ll limit it here.

Untwisted stitches tend to open up for your needles. When you’re inserting the needle from left front to right back for knitting, that should be possible without any difficulties, as the legs act like a doorframe facing this exact direction. When the stitches are twisted though, you would work against your stitches, fighting your way through in a kind of slalom motion.

Nepenthe, 10 months ago

Oh no, I'm your standard English thrower, still. I tried continental for a little and gave up because it was too finicky to successfully manage. Now that I've had a lot more dexterity practice in picking up crochet, I may be more liable to stick with it on another attempt.

You make a very good point, and I think I've been kneecapping myself in that respect because I am a neurotic person whose instinct is to knit/crochet so tightly that a third of the time, you couldn't tell the difference anyway. Which is. Obviously something to mind. But visible holes, though

gina, 10 months ago

I sure hope they are still around! I think it was a member on craftster.org, which is no longer, sadly.

At the risk of looking like an actual lunatic, please allow me to share my preferred way to visualize the “legs” of a correctly-seated and twisted knit stitch: i.imgur.com/qSpPd18.png

Not sure if that will make any difference for you, but the visual is always entertaining to me.

Nepenthe, 10 months ago

Ohhh my goodness, I really needed that laugh. If I had a printer, that would go on my wall. Amazing.

Looking at this, my first thought was, "Oh, so they're posting up heavy/leaning on their right leg...." and I think I know what my problem is now.

It's because I spent a college semester looking at x-rays and memorizing body quadrants, etc. and when you're talking about a patient, they're facing you, so it's flipped. Your left side is their right.

It took me ages to stop messing up notes/homework, but once I did, it became permanent. And now I'm a 30+ adult that routinely confuses their own right and left hand. It is both funny and humiliating.

I'm still saving this, though. It's mine. Maybe if I physically mirror the position every time I reference it, it will eventually stick. Or perhaps sing the hokey pokey. I'll figure it out. Leaning on invisible wall in direction of needle.

gina, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

Haha, at the very least you could get in some deep lunges while knitting. I should probably add a caveat that the picture applies if you’re knitting in a western style. I think there are some other styles where you sit the stitches in the opposite direction and knit through the back loop. Not to complicate things further!

Maybe it’s just easier to take all the directionals out of it and say that if knitting the stitch causes him to cross his ankles you know you’ve twisted it :)