You're Doing It Wrong

Well, I am, at least. Apparently.

I finally sat down with my mom yesterday and got her to explain the basic increasing stitch for knitting yesterday. (The front and back knit increase, for the curious.) It turns out that the reason I couldn't get the stitch to come out correctly based on the instructions in my knitting books is because I have been knitting incorrectly. This. Whole. Freaking. Time.

Apparently, I have been inserting the needle incorrectly during knit stitches, which has caused my stitches to all be uniformly twisted. It hasn't really been a problem for me because I have also been compensating by wrapping the yarn around the needle the wrong way when I do purl stitches. Hoo boy.

So Mom patiently sat there and checked my stitches repeatedly while I practiced doing these oh so basic stitches the right way. I sort of kind of have the hang of it now. Correcting the knitting issue seems to not be a problem for me. The purl correction is proving to be a bit more challenging to remember, however.

Sigh.

Then, once I felt I had a decent handle on that, we went back to working on increasing. Mom and I both agree that the basic increase stitch is pretty horrid (it leaves a purl-like bump in the knit-side wherever you add a stitch, not pretty), so she showed me a couple of other types of increases as well. Maybe when I get around to my next amigurumi I will be up to trying that knit puppy pattern again. We shall see. I made a little practice swatch (and, when decreasing, discovered a whole new set of behavior I need to learn), which I was going to photograph for you. But I gave it to my daughter to play with and she disappeared it. So, sorry. No photo for you.

Discussing it with my mom, I also decided to go ahead and start knitting correctly on the rest of my Doctor Who scarf. I was at a color change in the pattern anyway, so it seemed like a natural place to change up the way I knit. Overall, it is not that noticeable so far. I do see, however, that doing it this way makes the stitches a lot looser. Mom says this is because my stitches aren't all twisted up, which makes perfect sense. It does also mean that the final third of the scarf is probably going to be more stretchy than the rest. Most of me is okay with this. The scarf is for me, after all, and it is doubtful most people will notice unless I point it out to them.

There is a small part of me, however, that knows this will likely drive me just a little bit crazy (crazier?) for the rest of forever. Sigh.

Oh well. The more you know, right? Learning is always an uphill climb. At least most of the time the end result is worth the struggle. I think this will probably be one of those cases.

I hope you have a great day. I will be spending it trying to help my mom have the best birthday possible. I don't know that it gets much better than that, really.