My First Knitting Project: Finished!

As I showed last week, I have been taking the Knit Lab class on Craftsy.com and I have gotten so into it that I managed to finish the whole first project in just a few days! I've been completely addicted and I really love the thought of actually knitting something other than a square. The first project is very easy - it just consists of knitting and purling with a little increasing and decreasing - and I really like it. I've had the knitting completely done since Tuesday, but I didn't get all the ends woven in and block it until yesterday just due to the holiday. After I got the ends woven in, it looked like this:

See how the ends are all wavy? It didn't really look so fantastic yet. And those little green bows were to remind me which side was the front. Since it was all wavy and bunched, I had to 'block' the scarf. Blocking is where you steam the knitting with a warm iron and then kind of form it how you want it. I wanted to flatten out the end pieces and make that seam in the middle more even looking. Here is the scarf after blocking:

Pretty big difference. See how the middle is more smooth and the lacy edges are more fanned out so you can see them. Blocking also seemed to hide the one hole I had from a dropped stitch. See if you can see the difference between the two pictures. That hole on the right side end is the keyhole that you put the other side through to fasten it on your neck, so it looks like this:

And of course, I had to have an obligatory shot of me wearing it.

I know it won't look very impressive to an experienced knitter, but I am really quite proud of myself. I love that this was my first ever project. Most of the time people only make plain rectangle scarves for their first real project, so I'm glad mine had a little something fancy about it. That's kind of the neatest part of the class on Craftsy.com - Stefanie Japel makes your project more exciting. I really liked the fan piece and I have already started another version of this scarf. I'm making it yellow and I'm making it 30 stitches wide instead of 20 and I'm also making it much longer. I plan on eliminating the keyhole part and just having the fans at the end, but we shall see.

Anyway, if you would like to have a great feeling of accomplishment like I had this week, you should really check out the Knit Lab class on Craftsy. It is a great way to learn all the basics and you will get a cute scarf like this!