Hi! I just learnt how to knit a couple months ago, when I started to attend a meetup group with my mom. I learned to crochet in school, but I always failed to learn knitting, maybe because I’m left handed?. But something clicked now that I’m an adult and I’m hooked. I’m mostly taking on smaller projects like hats and mittens, these are the first I made to give away to a friend for her little girl (3yo) but they ended up being too small lol.
Used free patterns found online, the mittens were done with crochet. I don’t know what else to put in here 😅 So feel free to ask if I’m missing some important info here, please.
Edit: Thank you everyone for your kind words, I look forward to keep sharing my projects in such an encouraging and lovely community 💕
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.
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! 👍
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: https://i.imgur.com/qSpPd18.png
Not sure if that will make any difference for you, but the visual is always entertaining to me.
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.
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 :)
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.
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