Does anyone here use Signature Needle Arts needles? They are expensive, but I’ve heard good reviews. I was wondering if anyone has tried them.
Sounds like my first attempt at a scarf. I went from 36 stitches on my needles to almost 100 stitches on my needles - still don’t have a clue how that happened!
Hee - accepted. He’s a he - that’s our Cody. Goblin, gremlin, gargoyle…
Way late to the party, as I just got back into knitting again. I made a very amateur-looking scarf when I was a junior in high school, and haven’t touched any knitting since. I went online today to teach myself how to cast on, and away I went. I put on way too many stitches, thinking “oh boy, I’m going to make a really thick scarf!”…even though the ball of yarn I’m using is roughly the size of my fist :smack:. I keep messing up, too, so it’s a wonky-looking…cloth…thing. I might make it into a pot holder or something.
As for my (single ball of) yarn, it’s…uh…blue. It’s something my girl scout leader gave me like six years ago, so I have no idea what it is. But! My boyfriend works at Micheal’s, and he gets a discount, so when he saw me knitting…well, first he expressed surprise that I’m remotely interested in knitting, but then he said “if you need yarn, come to me, and I shall get it for you.” So yay!
I may not do anything terribly complicated (no sweaters or anything), and my current work is a mess, but I don’t care! I’m ~knitting~!
Maiira, I’m like you - I knitted a wonky scarf once in high school and then never touched any sort of knitting until quite recently. I still consider myself a novice but it’s amazing how quickly you can pick up new things.
Speaking of which, I’m determined to master the art of knitting hats before springtime.
Ack, so I’ve been knitting for a bit here now, and I’m running into a problem that I’ve been plagued with before: horrendously tight stitches. I know what I’m doing wrong (forming the stitch on the end of the needle instead of on the body) and they’re getting looser now, but man, do my hands hurt! And now my gigantic swatch (for that’s what I’ve decided my current “project” is) looks even more funky because the stitches nearer the end are super loose, whereas the ones near the beginning are super tight. So I’ve gotta keep working at it. But it’ll come back, eventually. And my boyfriend might take me yarn shopping tomorrow, so I’m really looking forward to that.
Does anyone have any ideas for “hairy” yarn? I got four skeins of red-orange yarn - looks sort of like angora yarn but only if angora were cheap and were made from the remains of dead woolly caterpillars. It’s a wool/acrylic blend and the yarn itself seems to be of decent quality, but it’s so . . . RED. And HAIRY.
Maybe mittens? Or a cat bed?
Find a tension that works for you – whatever your hands do naturally, as long as that’s not so tight that you can’t work the next row. Practice that for a while. Keep going.
That becomes your natural tension, one you maintain completely without thinking.
From then on, you’ll knit a swatch before starting every project to find out if you need to change needle sizes to hit the gauge called for in that project.
It’s really common to knit too tightly when you’re first learning - you’re worried about dropping stitches, etc, and you have to focus so much on every little thing your hands are doing at every moment. Keep at it, and once you get more comfortable with the motions, your stitches will loosen and your hands will relax and won’t hurt so much.
I find the same thing still happens to me if I do a project on small DPNs and haven’t done so in a while, and I’ve been knitting for… let’s see… 11 years or so. 
Thanks for the tips everyone. I think I’m starting to get the hang of it again, despite a few hangups here and there. I got back from Michaels about an hour or so ago, and now I’m taking my new yarn and making swatches with all of it. Found that working with thicker stuff is rather easier than working with thinner (no surprise there!). Wool-Ease is good, but tends to fuzz out a bit. Bought two skeins of pure acrylic, and the rest are wool/acrylic mixes. I got Lion Brand Wool-Ease, Patons (Shetland Chunky), Lion Brand (Amazing), Caron (Simply Soft) and Loops and Threads Charisma (Basic Bulky). So it’s not the most sophisticated collection in the world, but it’s a start. I’ll get fancier stuff when I get better.
So excited! I just got my Selbustrikk pattern book in the mail today. After next payday, I’ll be ordering yarn and needles to make Damestrompe.
I think a cat bed would be nice, assuming you have a cat to use it.
Tip though: don’t even bother thinking about trying to frog it if you screw up. Furry yarns like that just don’t pull out - choose a project that can stand a wonky stitch or two. (Which is why my vote is cat bed.)
I did a cat mat with two strand of different fuzzy yarns and a strand of Lion Brand Homespun held together. It was an easy, mindless knit, done all in garter stitch on huge (size 15) needles. I was trying to use up some stash and give the cat a place to sit that was not in the middle of my current projects - I used up stash, but my cat still likes to snuggle down in my current project.
Make a muppet pelt scarf. With that color, you could say it was Elmo!
ETA: Even better is if you sew two googly eyes to the end…
LOL. Cute idea, but I don’t want to traumatize my students. 
I’ll probably go with the cat bed. Thanks ladies!
Me too! Looks great.
Hey dangermom, thread lace crochet is a favorite of mine, and it’s actually not that difficult (in fact, it’s not that difficult to design your own lace edging patterns, which I started doing last year after getting halfway through a lace pattern from a book and getting hopelessly stuck on the incomprehensible instructions; it was easier to make up my own pattern for the rest of the edging than to figure out wtf the book was talking about).
Working on some beaded lace ringbearer-pillow projects now for a friend’s wedding, I’ll try to get around to putting up pix!
Can anyone link me to a super quick/easy baby hat pattern?
I have a shower to attend this weekend and some sort of hand made gift will be expected and I’m feeling very bummed right now - I think a baby hat is the best I can manage if someone can link to an easy pattern.
Thanks.
(P.S. I’m also buying a gift, but a hand made something or other will be expected as well).
Baby hats tend to be quick because they’re so small. How about an umbilical cord hat?
This umbilical cord hat is also pretty easy - just knit in stockinette until desired length and add an i-cord at the end.
Cute baby hats…
That book looks lovely, Rhiannon. But still intimidating to me as a knitter. I’m just now venturing into real stripes; I’m a big fan of self-striping yarn, but that’s cheating. 
I have one fingerless glove done (for my nephew, who wanted hobo gloves) and have started the second. I’m doing them in Caron Simply Soft because he’s 12 and will either lose them or be really rough on them, so I don’t want to make a big investment. They’ve been so much fun to knit that I’m going to make some for my brother and my niece and myself as well. In different color combinations, of course.
Hmmm… gotta think of who to knit one for…
Am off until Wednesday and am hoping to get knitting pics properly uploaded and linked to ravelry.
Also, I friended a couple more SDMB group members over there.