Knitting 101 - Week 1

Firstly let me clarify; I know how to knit, I know how to purl, I've knitted lots of scarfs and two jumpers in my time. But now I want to learn the tricky stuff and I want to knit beautiful things that I treasure rather than hide in a drawer. I want to get as good as my mum and to be able to pass on the knowledge to my daughter and even my sisters, should they ever want to learn.

This week we covered the basic equipment needed and Mum set me some homework; to knit sample squares of the following: fan stitch, snowball, stitch, moss stitch, garter stitch, stocking stitch, single and double rib.

Having never tried my hand at lace stitches before I ambitiously started out with Snowball stitch. After three failed attempts however I moved on to Fan Stitch. After dropping a stitch a few rows in this was the result of attempt two.

I've always loved the dense texture of Moss Stitch and was surprised to find out that it was just alternating rows of knit 1, purl 1. I think I need to work on my tension but this should correct itself with a bit more practice. The abominable Snowball Stitch took me a while to get my head around, but I got there in the end and was very happy with the result. Unfortunately my ball of wool ran out with just 3 cast off stitches to go, and since it was an odd ball from mum's stash I had to splice in a different yarn to finish it off.

After knitting these 3 sample swatches I am feeling restless and need to start a project I can sink my teeth into. Mum is away at the moment so i am boldly going to attempt to start something without her...