Part Two: Getting The Hang Of It

Well, things have moved on a bit since that slightly disastrous Thursday when I ruined my knitted necklace.

I had a Knit Night organised for Friday evening and knew I could count on Gill and Sarah to help me iron out the troubles I'd been having getting to grips with purling. Sarah had brought 5mm double-pointed needles (dpns) on a cable for me to try out as she swears it's an easier way to knit than faffing about with long needles.

I'd decided that I was going to knit a neck warmer in moss stitch that looks the same on both sides. This entails casting on an uneven number of stitches, beginning each row with knit 1, and then knit 1, purl 1 along each row - nice and simple but makes an interesting texture. I picked up my standard 5mm 14" (how idiotic is it to have both metric and imperial butting along at once?), straight needles and used Sarah's cowl to judge that I wanted the neck-warmer to be approximately 20 cms wide. I then proceeded to cast on stitches.

The first problem I encountered was that I naturally knit quite tightly, so I was having trouble casting on loosely enough to make a success of the first row. I tried and tried several times, Sarah even showed me a different way of casting on, but I was still casting on too tight! Eventually, she suggested that I was having too much trouble controlling the long needles and so perhaps I might give the dpns with a cable a try.

Lo and behold, I found it much easier to cast on loosely and get going. Gill mentioned that I should make sure the yarn was away from me for the knits and towards me for the purls. Ok, that's that sorted out. Then I got a bit confused about how exactly I was supposed to produce moss stitch that was the same on both sides. I'd found a Blog that seemed to explain this but then I realised I was following the instructions on how to do American moss stitch, which is what we call 'double moss'. Apparently, what we call 'moss stitch', Americans call 'seed stitch'. This highlights a bit of a issue with using the internet for knitting help: a lot of the really great, helpful stuff is American and they frequently use different terminology to us Brits. So, another lesson learnt.

Then, I found I was a few rows in and had gained several stitches on one row (quite an achievement, go me!). Ah, for feck's sake. So, another rip back and my yarn is starting to get quite fluffy and therefore trickier to work with. However, I found this site that had a nice little caveat: 'Make sure you bring the yarn between your needles to bring it back and forth for your knits and purls'. Aha, that explains that one then: I'd been yarning over by accident every so often. With that in mind, I started again and this time I knew to be conscious of bringing the yarn forward between the needles for the first purl and then moving it back for the knits and forward for the purls.

Suddenly, my work started to make sense:

So, I'm sure that, by the time I've finished this project, I'll be the finest knitter and purler in the land. Maybe.

Has anyone else had such trouble getting to grips with the basics? Please, tell me I'm not the sole candidate for Idiot Extraordinaire of the Knitting World (although I do kinda fancy a knitted crown and sash).