Knitting 101

Last month a co-worker and I decided to take a Knitting 101 class at the local Joann's. Pam had received a knitting basket as a gift, and that is what sparked her interest in learning to knit. She invited me to go along, and I agreed even though I had never even seen a knitting needle before, say nothing about holding one or using one. I'll usually try anything once and it sounded kind of fun, so off we went! We were there for over two hours learning to cast on, create a knit stitch and bind off. I really think we caught on pretty fast, and we had a great teacher who was very patient...thank goodness!! :)
During our class, I created 6 or 7 rows of 23 knit stitches. My intentions were to take my project home and continue to make a very basic scarf. I told myself that no matter how much I messed up, I was going to keep going until I had a whole scarf. I was really excited about this new craft that I had learned, so the next few days I did alot of knitting. As I continued, I started to notice holes here and there where I had apparently lost or slipped a stitch, but I just kept going. "Oh, I will just call this my first project. Even if it turns out horribly, I will learn from it and laugh about it later" I thought to myself. So I kept on going and going. I didn't knit for about a week or so, then one day I picked up my needles that held the beginnings of a poor holey scarf and I started on my knitting journey once again. This time I noticed that it was taking me a really long time to complete a row, much longer than it had taken me before. As I thought about it, I stretched out the part of the scarf that I had completed so far and noticed that it had taken on a very odd shape. My "scarf" looked as though it was getting wider with every row of stitches. I knew that I had started out with only 23 stitches, and as I counted the row of stitches that I had just completed, I burst into laughter. Somehow, I ended up with 37 stitches on the last row. How in the world I added on 14 stitches somewhere between my first row and last row, I will probably never know. At this point I decided it was probably best to bind off and start all over with a new project. After I finally got Brad to stop laughing at my finely made scarfy thingy, he so sweetly informed me that I had done a great job and that we can just use it as a potholder. It was definitely a learning experience, and we got a great laugh out of it!! As of today, I have new yarn and new needles, so hopefully my next "scarf" will turn out better than what you see below!! Ha! :)