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Knitting Class, Week 1
I am pleased with my first knitting class which was yesterday.
Casting on
Already I learned something: the knit on cast-on method. (Casting on is how you get the first row of stitches onto your knitting needle.) I love this method better than the other method I learned because you do not have to guess how much yarn you will need. You just make the tail however long you want it and get started.
We have been warned that it's useful to know several methods for casting on because different methods have different strengths. This method "resembles the knit stitch and is stretchy." Sounds perfect to me.
Our little book of handouts also describes another method which "is firm and good for items that receive a lot of wear." I can't exactly tell how to do it, but I can tell that this method also does not make you guess how much yarn you will need. Woo hoo!
Cotton yarn
Sparkylibrarian warned that all-cotton yarns "don't have as much stretch-and-rebound as wool or other blends and they are HEAVY." My instructor explained why she had specified that we get cotton yarn:
* it forces you to be precise
* you can see your mistakes more easily
* it is what dishcloths are made of
She also recommended using circular needles for, really, any kind of knitting job, because they let you hold your knitting in your lap rather than having all the weight hanging from your wrists. So she at least addressed the heaviness issue.
Since I am not a beginning knitter, I don't care about lack of stretchiness. Especially with this new (to me) cast-on method which is so much looser and easier to work with the way I do it than my old method which is always quite tight the way I do it. And we certainly will be making a lot of dishcloths.
Dishcloths
Our first project, due next week, is Grandma's Favorite Dishcloth. In some ways, this is a great beginner pattern. It uses knit stitches but not perls, it's a small project, and it's interesting.
The not-so-ideal part is that no one finished the first half in class, so we didn't practice knitting two stitches together. I'm not a beginner, so it works for me.
Except that I am not into dishcloths. I don't even really get them. I use a sponge for dishes with a scrubby part on the back. Like dishcloths, sponges are washable.
The link above that I found says, "once you give one away and they find out that you can Scrub Glass with one, you will be knitting these things for the rest of your life." Once again, I just don't get it. I can scrub glass with my sponge and even with my SOS pad.
My pattern says that instead of maxing out at 43 stitches, you can go to 50 stitches for a facecloth or even more stitches for a baby blanket. We prefer regular terry cloth washcloths over knitted facecloths. And baby blankets are not quite as exciting in this part of the country as in places that actually get chilly.
Another idea is to continue knitting the widest part for a long while to make a scarf with pointy ends. Cute. More ideas are shown here.
Continental method
I was hoping to re-learn knitting using the continental method, which is generally considered more difficult to learn but quicker to do than the English method I use. However, my instructor doesn't really like the continental method, so I won't be learning it from her.
Casting on
Already I learned something: the knit on cast-on method. (Casting on is how you get the first row of stitches onto your knitting needle.) I love this method better than the other method I learned because you do not have to guess how much yarn you will need. You just make the tail however long you want it and get started.
We have been warned that it's useful to know several methods for casting on because different methods have different strengths. This method "resembles the knit stitch and is stretchy." Sounds perfect to me.
Our little book of handouts also describes another method which "is firm and good for items that receive a lot of wear." I can't exactly tell how to do it, but I can tell that this method also does not make you guess how much yarn you will need. Woo hoo!
Cotton yarn
Sparkylibrarian warned that all-cotton yarns "don't have as much stretch-and-rebound as wool or other blends and they are HEAVY." My instructor explained why she had specified that we get cotton yarn:
* it forces you to be precise
* you can see your mistakes more easily
* it is what dishcloths are made of
She also recommended using circular needles for, really, any kind of knitting job, because they let you hold your knitting in your lap rather than having all the weight hanging from your wrists. So she at least addressed the heaviness issue.
Since I am not a beginning knitter, I don't care about lack of stretchiness. Especially with this new (to me) cast-on method which is so much looser and easier to work with the way I do it than my old method which is always quite tight the way I do it. And we certainly will be making a lot of dishcloths.
Dishcloths
Our first project, due next week, is Grandma's Favorite Dishcloth. In some ways, this is a great beginner pattern. It uses knit stitches but not perls, it's a small project, and it's interesting.
The not-so-ideal part is that no one finished the first half in class, so we didn't practice knitting two stitches together. I'm not a beginner, so it works for me.
Except that I am not into dishcloths. I don't even really get them. I use a sponge for dishes with a scrubby part on the back. Like dishcloths, sponges are washable.
The link above that I found says, "once you give one away and they find out that you can Scrub Glass with one, you will be knitting these things for the rest of your life." Once again, I just don't get it. I can scrub glass with my sponge and even with my SOS pad.
My pattern says that instead of maxing out at 43 stitches, you can go to 50 stitches for a facecloth or even more stitches for a baby blanket. We prefer regular terry cloth washcloths over knitted facecloths. And baby blankets are not quite as exciting in this part of the country as in places that actually get chilly.
Another idea is to continue knitting the widest part for a long while to make a scarf with pointy ends. Cute. More ideas are shown here.
Continental method
I was hoping to re-learn knitting using the continental method, which is generally considered more difficult to learn but quicker to do than the English method I use. However, my instructor doesn't really like the continental method, so I won't be learning it from her.