The lady at the store knew I was a beginner. I’ve completed my first scarf with the knit stitch. I saw a lovely scarf hanging at the shop and asked if it was hard. She said no. It’s K1 YO, K2tog K1. She showed me the yarn. It’s delicious! I bought two.
But I tried all night. I was up till 3:00am. I can’t seem to get my needles through the yarn, it’s quite delicate, and oh no, the yarn loops are hard to discrimate between. I can do a YO okay I think, but the K2tog part, I am a failure. It slips off my needle. Then more loops slip off the needle. It’s all very bad. Plus it looks like a knotted mess. Nothing like the scarf at the shop.
Oh no!! What shall I do? I’m very disturbed that I bought this and can’t seem to make it work. I will do anything to make it work. I hope there will be suggestions for me.
And thank-you to the owner of this site. It’s an amazing site. The videos have helped me enormously. It’s a beautiful site.
It isn’t a difficult pattern, but some of the “fancy” yarns can be difficult to work with. Since you are so frustrated right now I suggest just setting it aside and work with regular worsted yarn. You might even practice the pattern you were having trouble with. Using regular yarn will help you see what it looks like and learn some new techniques.
Okay Jan. Thank you. I’ll go to the drug store today and buy a worsted yarn. I don’t know what worsted mean, but hopefully it’ll be on the package?
I guess I sounded like I was on my last nerve up there, huh. lol! I guess it seems worse than it really is when I’m sitting here all by myself. (I’ll take a deep breath, inhale, exale. All right. I’m okay. hehe!)
I second Jan’s post. As a relative newbie, I find a lot of stitches difficult to maneuver initially, especially coming from a crocheting background where I could just hook the yarn through the loop and be done with it! I have a cheap-o skein of plain worsted “practice yarn” that I try out any new stitches on and I usually use my size 8 needles so my stitches are big enough to see well and get the hang of the new procedure.
Another thought since your stitches are slipping off is your needle type. I have trouble with bamboo/wood needles since I knit rather tightly, but perhaps that’s what you need to give you some added “traction” and help keep your stitches on the needles.
Lastly, don’t give up! It takes time to get your hands, mind, yarn and needles all in the same groove. And since you were up til 3AM, you were probably tired on top of being frustrated and that never helps.
Worsted is the medium weight yarn used by a lot of projects. Here’s a chart. Sometimes the yarn will have a number on it as well or instead of the text.
BTW… you can get yarn at a drugstore?? Interesting… mine doesn’t sell yarn. :??
krazy - I’ll see about getting a pair of those bamboo types. Mine are metal and are real slippery. Super good for my first scarf but not for this one.
By the way, I only found out the yarn is called Lattice when I did a search last night and I found it online for cheaper to boot. Why I oughta!
Jan - Hiya. I’m in a teeny lil’ town, pop. under 8,000, so the store has just about everything but low quality. Wal-Mart isn’t here yet, but it’s trying.
My son heard me say I need to buy some other yarn to practice on and he dug through his toys and brought me a big skein of green yarn I can use. Bless his little heart. It’s not pretty but I don’t care. Yay!
When I first started knitting I thought I would love the novelty yarns because I thought it would hide my flaws. But they are so hard to work with that I almost quit altogether! Now, I rarely use them for just this reason.
Yeah, I may have made a $20.00 boo-boo with this yarn. Wish the shop lady had forewarned me. But I’m going to work it for a week with the suggestions I’ve received and see what it gets me. My fingers are crossed! (But not TOO crossed or I can’t knit at all.)
