Knitting Family Snapshot

My sister is trying to learn how to knit. Never mind that she is a single mom with a very active 2 year old. Once she got the idea in her head, she was determined to master her new interest. Her progress is slow, especially since I live an hour away and also have a handfull of life so I don't have a lot of knitting time with her. The moments she has to herself are often spent cleaning up the kitchen, or catching up on sleep. But still, she is learning how to knit.

She knit the obligatory garter stitch scarf. She knit a tedious baby blanket. She wasn't sure she could knit a sweater yet, but was bored with the rectangles, so I set her up with this.

I gave her a 5 stitch cast on and did this on the first row.

knit 1, yarn over, k1, yo, place marker, k1, yo, k1, yo, k1.

For the second row, she knit back.  The rest of the triangle goes like this:

Right side: k1, yo, work to marker, yo, slip marker (sm), k1 (this is the center stitch), yo, work to last stitch, yo, k1. Turn and work wrong side row.

Wrong side: work all stitches.

The fun part of this is that as she grew more confident, she added stockinette to her garter stitch, made some garter ridge rows as the mood struck, and even flirted with the idea of an eyelet row.

If you look closely towards the bottom of the picture, you can see when life intervened, when she found even less knitting time, lost track of the marker at the center stitch, and after a few weeks' hiatus, picked it back up again but forgot how it worked. When she brought it to me after about a month of neglect, I ripped out six rows, and gave her a new stitch marker. She was surprised that (expert knitter as she considers me to be) I didn't pull out all the mistakes. I said I thought the scarf was still lovely, imperfect as it seemed in a few places. Overall, her knitting is wonderful. Her tension is even, her hands work smoothly, she has good flow. It's just that she hasn't quite yet figured out how to read a yarn over in the the row below. So what? It's early work, and it will always be a kind of tree ring record of her life this year. The struggles are there in her knitting, and that is a precious thing.

Comments

[kim in oregon]

I think it is astonishingly beautiful. It puts my early projects to shame.

[Colleen]

Great beginner project!!!

[Linda]

I also believe in such tender regard for early efforts! It seems to me that as this knitter grows, she will probably have a much more serene acceptance of her mistakes and will better enjoy fixing them because she didn't have the stress of perfection when she learned! Yay, you!

[Margaret]

Cheers to your Sis! She's going to be a capital K Knitter if she's already working outside the pattern box!

[Brooke]

That's absolutely beautiful, and it's going to look fabulous. I'm sure she's going to treasure it one day down the road, getting a glimpse of where she started.

[Mom]

So proud of my now two knitterley daughters.

[Melanie]

Good job bringing a new knitter into the world. I love that colorway! Do you happen to remember the yarn/color?