Week 1: Learn to Knit

About a week ago, I decided that I would do one thing I'd never done per week for the next fifteen weeks. 

I wish I could say that there was some sort of overarching thought behind this, something that had been coming for ages, something leading up to this sort of decision.

There wasn't. Basically, I just thought "hey, wouldn't it be cool if I did a bunch of new stuff and wrote about it?" and then I answered myself with a resounding "yes. Yes it would".

So I started last week. I learned how to knit.

This was something that I had wanted to do for a while. I had even bought the knitting needles and 4 balls of yarn at Daiso ages ago on a whim. There was an inner knitter inside me that was just aching to get free. Her name was Super Knitter Jeri.

The problem was that I was lazy. I needed something to kick my ass into gear. This seemed to fit both the criteria for the challenge and the ass kicking criteria, so it was decided.

I stuffed my mouth full of chocolate chips and looked up "how to knit lefthanded" on youtube. I watched the first video that came up about 10 times over and over, painstakingly learning how to cast on. Then, I knitted about 5 rows and ended up with at least 10 more stitches than I started with. Luckily (for myself) I didn't take any pictures of this, so you have no idea how embarrassingly bad it was.

I was so upset with myself that I pulled all the stitches out and started again.

Unfortunately, by that point, I had already forgotten how to cast on, so I had to watch the video 10 more times. Then, I tried the knitting part again. It still didn't look perfect, but it looked better than before. The beginning rows looked something like this:

 

Eventually,  after a lot of TV time with my knitting needles, I ran out of yarn and moved onto other colours. Apparently you're not supposed to do this, but I just tied the end of one colour to the beginning of the other and continued to knit. I will rectify this on my next scarf (oh yes, there will be more). Then it started to look like this:

 

Yay! I had something that was starting to look like a scarf! And I had done it all by myself! You have no idea what kind of adrenaline rush this brought me. Seriously. Ridiculous. I became obsessed very quickly, and would spend time at parties (sort of) knitting while half listening to the conversation at hand. My friends still love me, though. I think.

Anyway, so tonight I finally finished my scarf. It looks like this:

 

It's pretty short, but it does the trick. I wore it home from Jessica's today, and it kept my neck nice and cozy. I've gotten so pumped about this that I promptly dragged Andromeda out to Daiso to buy more yarn and knitting needles. I've got plenty of projects on the horizon, so get ready, internet!

(Me wearing my warm and wonderful scarf)

That's all for now! Now, rest up and get ready for the surprise new thing that Jeri does next week! What will it be? Only time will tell!