Knitting

So I decided to teach myself to knit. I ordered materials on Walmart.com and thought I'd start with a learn to knit kit ages 7 and up. If a 7 year old can do this how hard can it be, right? And it says knit a scarf "in just two hours!" Perfect.

I tear open the package with the enthusiasm of a 7 year old on Christmas morning. This is gonna be great!

Okay, first things first...directions. I open to the first page and notice some hieroglyphics that may have been pictures of how the yarn is supposed to look on your hands along with written words that could have been Chinese for all I could understand what I was supposed to do. You would have to be a 7 year old tiny genius to understand this stuff! I barely got the slip knot down much less cast on and knit stitch. This is gonna be harder than I thought.

So, I turn to youtube. The first video has music and goes so quickly that I don't even understand what the woman is doing. She's either knitting or casting some kind of spell at super sonic speed. Clearly this isn't gonna work.

Video 2 is more helpful. Made more helpful by the fact that I could pause it every 5 seconds, try to position my hands correctly, try to cast on or knit stitch, mess it up, rewind the video, do it again.

I semi figure out what is going on and I begin making the mistake of NOT looking at the Chinese directions that came in the package. Immediately I notice that my scarf doesn't really look like the scarf on the package. Hmmmm...well, maybe it will when I'm done.

Then I wonder why it seems like I'm running out of yarn at an astonishing rate. How am I gonna finish my scarf????

I look at the directions and it says to only do 5 stitches, not the 20+ that I did. Well, that would explain the yarn situation. I take apart the whole scarf, wind the yarn up in a ball, and start over.

I had decided to do 10 stitches because I don't have the neck of a 7 year old. I start over. Think my scarf still looks wide and realize what I thought was 10 stitches was 21. How did that even happen? I take apart the scarf again and realize it has now been 6 hours...

6 hours and I haven't gotten 1 row of stitches, I can't feel my fingers, I'm seeing spots, and I may have fractured my right elbow. And I'm tired.

I put the yarn down. Tomorrow is another entire day that I have to spend on my scarf. I will be triumphant!