Knitrospective - 5 tips I wish I knew when I started knitting

I was taught to knit by my grandmother when I was quite young. I was given a pair of straight needles, much too long for my little hands, and squeaky acrylic yarn. The stitches were cast on for me, way too tightly and I was shown how to do the knit stitch. I was told just to knit and then had the piece bound off for me when I was done. The knitting always turned out a weird shape, had dropped stitches, or extra stitches and was a boring garter strip.

Given these early experiences it took me a while after that before I went back to knitting for myself. Inspired by an urge to be creative and use my hands to make things.

I went back to basics and taught myself, by reading blogs and magazines, searching for how to's on You Tube and watching knitting podcasts.

Over time I was able to teach myself a lot, but when I look back on when I started knitting seriously, I wish I had known the following key tips:

1. A slip knot is not required to cast on, in fact knots should mostly be avoided in knitting

2. A tight cast on is caused by the lack of space between each cast on stitch, not the size of the stitch

3. Tinking back or ripping out is not failure, it is correcting a mistake you will not be happy with in the finished item
4.Choose a project you want to knit and practice on that as it is much more rewarding than a random strip or square
5. Use nice yarn and nice needles, as this is a key part of the process and adds to the Beginners should be taught to knit with good yarn and nice needles - because we should be sharing the joy and love that we have for our craft!

Polwarth Yarn

I have purchased some 100% Polwarth yarn for the shop. I have found as a knitter in Australia most of the yarn that is readily available is either Merino or labelled as just "wool". Part of the appeal of moving into dyeing my own yarn is that I can experiment with yarn compositions, combine my own colours and knit with yarn that I have never knit with before (after all I do need to sample the yarn first!!). Hopefully as I develop my shop I can expand my bases to include interesting breeds and blends, expand my own knitting experience and be able to make it accessible to other crafters.

Here is a little summary of exactly what Polwarth is:

• developed in Victoria (Australia) in 1880s
• bred from one-quarter Lincoln and three-quarters Merino
• they have long, soft, fine wool and also are a good meat sheep

I began to work with it this weekend, dyeing up my first batch. I am excited to see how the finished yarn turns out, how it feels, looks and knits up.

Set up Shop

The set up show e-course finished at the end of October. It was an information packed month of daily emails and interesting discussions on Facebook.

I have learned a lot and gained encouragement and confidence.

A big thing that stuck in my mind from doing the course was that your business will never be finished or perfect, so I have decided to stop preparing and today I opened my shop (you can click on the tab at the top of the page and go there now for a look!).

It is a big leap of faith. Will anyone like my colourways? Will anyone choose to spend their hard earned money to buy my yarn? Have I properly figured out my shipping methods? Are all the elements of my shop set up? I guess only time will tell.

A new phase of learning and development now starts and I am excited to see where it takes me.