I went to our local fabric store (JoAnn's) and bought the book shown here: The Learn to Knit a Sweater Book by Jean Leinhauser. It babied me into learning how to knit after just a couple weeks I was going strong!
I'm started my first project... a sweater from Leinhauser's book. I'm having fun making it and I hope it will fit once I'm done. I'm pretty proud with how it is turning out. This picture shows where I am today, February 13, 2000. I'll try to keep you updated when it is done.
Also, I wanted to learn how to knit in the continental style (Leinhauser's book shows the English method) so I checked out a good book from my local library: Vogue Knitting from the editors of Vogue Knitting magazine. It has a bunch of information about knitting, common patterns, and how to read patterns. Excellent. Lots of photographs. I think I might even go out and buy myself a copy to keep. (Which I later did.)
UPDATE: I finished the sweater in November, 2000!! Considering it was my first project ever, I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. It took me much longer than it should have because I had knitted an extra repeat of the stripe pattern on one of the pieces, so it was way too long. I was very reluctant to rip it out and redo the neck. Of course, after I let it sit for several months, I went back and had it finished in a couple sittings. Now that I'm getting more confident, however, I think I will go back and make a few changes so I will want to wear it more often. I want to redo the neck line. I want to wear a turtleneck or something underneath, but with the slot neckline, it doesn't look good. As you can see, the sleeves are a little too long. I didn't realize at the time that the shoulders would hang down, so I miscalculated how long the sleeves would have to be. I may go back and make the ribbing nicer. The book teaches to do single casting on. It's easy, but it really doesn't look as nice as it could. Also, the ribbing flares out and doesn't stay straight.

Page last modified: February 7, 2002