What on earth was I thinking when I decided to learn to knit?! I mean… I know what I was thinking. I was thinking I didn’t want to clean my room and that I wanted a big chunky knitted charcoal throw for our bed. But let’s get deeper. What was I thinking? How is this a thing that so many of you do? Even switching from the ludicrous size 17 aluminum needles to the size 8 bamboo needles I still didn’t magically know how to knit.

Also they don’t say 8 on them so I had to google how many millimeters for a size 8 knitting needle. This whole knitting thing, really good practice for internet searching. If I didn’t know how to search the internet before, I sure would know how to by now.

But I have to say my new knitting needles are soothing. I opted for bamboo so I can feel fancy and better about myself since bamboo grows quickly and is so incredibly renewable. Also I know you can buy bamboo yarn because I use it for tassel making and I quite like the idea of knitting a bamboo yarn something or other with a set of bamboo needles. The sense of the same plant for so many uses on one project is quite appealing to me. Is it off to say I am comforted by the versatility of bamboo?

Because that’s about the only thing with this project that I find comforting right now. The video my cousin recommended is way too advanced for me. She’s already got a bunch of stuff knitted right in the preview. So now I’m searching that site to see if I can find someone other than the perky quirky fun woman to teach me how to get the yarn on the first needle to begin with so I could move on to the video on how to knit stitch something. After several attempts to find that info I found this video. At which point I was actually able to get the yarn on the needle in what I think might be the right way.

In the end that video totally didn’t help me figure out the knit stitch. But it did make super clear to me that I was not on-boarding the yarn onto the needle the right way in the first place. So of course I couldn’t knit a knit stitch. For goodness sake until just this moment I couldn’t remember that getting yarn on the first needle was casting on. Sure sure. I could have edited that later but I want to be honest with all of you about my state of mind. Also on-boarding is totally the new casting on.

So after this man helped me figure out my on-boarding I looked at several other videos as recommended by some really loving folks on social media including the charming wife of a dear friend from high school. Hi Amy!

And I came across this wiki on how to knit for beginners. So much kinder than what I searched for which was “how to knit for a complete idiot.”

This page provided me with my AH HA! moment. and I was able to knit two whole stitches before I dropped everything and made a complete mess.

That happened a couple more times before I decided that the white stretchy acrylic yarn was the devil and switched to a scrap ball of something purple that looks fancy but I have no idea what it is. After easily on-boarding the fancy-ass unidentified purple yarn and attempting to get some stitches and failing failing failing I remembered another piece of advice from James that I didn’t include in the James Says… post from Monday. 

“And while fuzzy acrylic always looks fun, they’re hard to learn on, because you can’t see what you’re doing”

Ah. Well that fancy purple stuff is awfully fuzzy and thus I assume it is the fuzzy acrylic stuff that she warned me away from. So I switched to some aqua colored yarn I got in what I believe is called a “gumball” of yarn. Is that an amount of yarn or a type of yarn? I don’t know. But I’m knitting with it. I managed to get 14 of 15 stitches and then I realized that I have no idea what I’m doing once I get all the yarn from the left needle to the right needle. I panicked and dropped the whole thing and then my cat grabbed it and ran off. 

I’m calling this a win for today. Maybe tomorrow something will stay together?