Well, I’m taking the plunge into the deep end and attempting my first sweater. Luckily, I’m not doing this completely on my own. It’s a project for my beginners knitting class, which started last night!

I’ll bring my camera to class next time and snap a photo of a sample of the finished product. It’s a basic pullover, roll-neck sweater.

We’re knitting on size 13 straight needles with Cascade 220 wool yarn. I picked out a pretty pink color which I’ve decided to call “blush”… but the color doesn’t officially have a name so far as I know (just a number — 8114). So, this is going into my knitting notebook as the “first blush” sweater project.

Most of the first class session was spent on learning to cast on, knit, and purl. At the end of class we measured our swatches and cast on for the real deal — which is almost entirely stockinette. It’s a small class — just five of us — but I was glad that I had at least a tiny bit of prior experience. Most of the other ladies hadn’t ever picked up needles before, and some left feeling overwhelmed.

My favorite thing was using the store’s swift and ball winder. Pretty slick! (Something new to search for on ebay!) And it was nice to start getting to know some of the women who work at the shop. I felt a strange sense of accomplishment after someone showed me the fridge in the back of the store and explained the procedure for putting 50 cents in the designated plastic princess cup in exchange for any of the drinks inside. Feels sort of like my first day at a new school. I can anticipate that I’ll eventually fit in and feel at home there, even though I feel a bit lost for right now.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 23rd, 2004 at 10:28 pm and is filed under Knitting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.