Hi! I just learnt how to knit a couple months ago, when I started to attend a meetup group with my mom. I learned to crochet in school, but I always failed to learn knitting, maybe because I'm left handed?. But something clicked now that I'm an adult and I'm hooked. I'm mostly taking on smaller projects like hats and mittens, these are the first I made to give away to a friend for her little girl (3yo) but they ended up being too small lol.
Used free patterns found online, the mittens were done with crochet. I don't know what else to put in here 😅 So feel free to ask if I'm missing some important info here, please.
Edit: Thank you everyone for your kind words, I look forward to keep sharing my projects in such an encouraging and lovely community 💕
Not worth posting, my bum! These look great! I love the colour combo too where you've picked out that dark blue from the variegated and run with it, really makes it feel like a designed set and not just a "well I had this one ball of yarn..." thing. And cables! I know experienced knitters who shy away from cables! Also congrats on being bistitchual now! I'm using too many exclamation marks because it's early in the morning and I'm excited, just roll with it.
Since we're apparently sharing our own newb tales in this thread too, here's mine:
I learned from illustrations in a blog post and must have misinterpreted them massively because I spent the first month knitting everything through the back loop. Turns out if you do that consistently everything sort of looks right, so I never noticed until eventually watching a video and realising she did it different and then looking up why that might be. No wonder I hated purling so much though! 😂
Thank you! I wanted to do the whole thing in the variegated yarn, but my mom (an avid knitter since she was 6yo) advised me that when the stitch is more 'complex' it looks best done in a solid color, so I got another skein, and I love teal, so there's that.
I didn't know there were different styles of knitting until I started watching youtube tutorials. Some made sense with what I have learned from my mom (that I now know is called continental) but others looked soooo weird.
Aha! Yes mom definitely knows what she's talking about 😄 The more complex the stitch pattern the more solid the colourway is definitely a good rule to live by, although in fairness a lot of people love to use variegated for everything even if the stitch pattern does ultimately get a bit lost.
It's one of those personal preference things you'll end up just experimenting with here and there. I was so afraid of making the "wrong" yarn choice I stuck to entirely solids for probably a year haha, don't be like me, it's not that big a deal.
I also agree with your mom. It’s really disappointing to spend a lot of time on a complex pattern and have your neat stitching drowned out by the variegation.
One pattern I do really like for variegated yarn is linen stitch. It’s only slightly more complicated than stockinette, but I find that the slipped stitches actually help to enhance the variegation instead of fighting with it. Instead of color streaks you get something closer to confetti or cookie sprinkles.
Linen stitch looks cute, I'll have to give it a try some time. Also seems it'd be good for combining two colors of yarn: one variegated and one solid. That'd be too advanced for me now, but I'll certainly keep this in mind for a future project, thanks! :)
A solid + variegated mix for linen stitch would be really lovely. I think I’ve seen this done with a solid black and a very colorful variegated yarn and it gave almost a stained glass effect.
And do what you’re comfortable with, but I’d say if you’re doing cables you’re more advanced than you think :).