Country Home Knitting | My Newbie Knitters Journey


I seem to start so many of my blog posts with the line "it's been a while since I last posted" but it really is a long time since I last shared anything with you on here. It's not been that way intentionally I promise!
How have you been? What's new in your world?

I've been having a ridiculously busy time at work lately as some of you may know that I work part time in a primary school and I happen to work in year 2 (6-7 year olds). We've just gotten over the SATs and are enjoying the start of our week long half term break.
Work usually comes with drama - or at least it does where I work unfortunately - that's why I've not been actively posting on here.

However I have been working my through some crochet projects and I've even started to learn how to knit! If you know me then you'll know that I began crocheting because I couldn't grasp the art of knitting. I will do an additional blog post on How I Got Started With Crochet, but for now, I'll say that for 3 years I've crocheted on and off - the last year more so. Evidently because I've recently taught myself to knit! 

In hindsight I think that crocheting has actually helped me to pick up knitting easier and wonder now why I didn't try this way year ago. To think of all the projects I could of created :) Still I get to enjoy making them now! 

I'm going to share with you my very beginners journey of knitting with a few pictures I've taken to document the journey. Initially I had this idea to create swatch squares of all the knitting stitches I learn -complete with all their imperfections because they are a HUGE part of my journey also. Then I was going to sew all these swatches together to make a complete blanket in a patchwork style. I still might do this but will have to remember that this is my plan because I might end up choosing colours of yarn that don't compliment each other very well otherwise :/ 



This was my initial attempt of the Alternating Welted Leaf stitch - if you manage to zoom in on the picture you'll see that whilst there are some shapes resembling the welted leaf within the small sample, it actually didn't quite work out very well. So I frogged it and went back to the drawing board - or knitting needles as it was in this case. 

Next up... 



This is the Staggered Eyelets stitch, and although there is a couple of tiny mistakes in the swatch, I am very pleased with this and fell completely in love with the pattern, and with knitting. This swatch actually made me go an order knitting needles, and look for patterns and work out pattern ideas for blankets and shawls - and that was it, my mind was running away into knitters heaven. 

This stitch combines the following stitches; Knit, Purl, Knit 2 Together (K2TG), Yarn Over (YO). It's worked in multiples of 4 + 3 but you'd need to add extra on for creating a border for each side. This is a project I'm going to be working on so I will have the pattern written up for you on here hopefully soon, once I've gotten my yarn in either Mint, Lemon or White. My intention is to knit a Mint or Lemon baby blanket, put it away for when I have my first born to go with the cardigan my Auntie Tracy knitted for me in time for when I was born! 

At the moment I'm working on a basic Knit stitch - otherwise known as Garter Stitch ombre inspired blanket. I'll share more when there is more to see because at the moment there is only about 4 rows, so ultimately not much to see right now. 

I'd love to know if you've ever tried to knit and if you are a seasonal and experienced knitter, what was your first ever project? 

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