Guess what? I didn’t know how to purl. This is not the purl stitch, but I will now lovingly refer to this as the, “Amy Purl.”
I showed my mother-in-law this scarf and she had a bit of a confused look on her face. She wanted to know which stitches I had been doing. I explained that this was knitting and purling (I thought she would know that by now) and she had an amused expression on her face. Um….yeah, not so much.
This is the “Amy Purl” which actually looks quite lovely and nice and straight, but is not purling at all. Everything I was doing was completely backwards so now I am learning how to purl correctly. This is a lot harder now that I did an entire scarf the wrong way. It is like trying to reteach my brain and I keep wanting to do things the wrong way.
Instead of our planned hat tutorial, my lesson was on how to purl correctly. I guess I will try hats when I can master the purling. We did talk a lot about all of these crazy pattern techniques, which are so confusing and my head felt like it was spinning after learning all of these abbreviations.
I do want to say though that I am not at all frustrated. Nope, not at all. I am good enough, I am smart enough….
Perhaps, I was a bit too confident in my knitting abilities.
…and Gosh Darnit, people like me!
My MIL has given up trying to teach me how to knit–I get so frustrated that I’ve decided it’s best for our relationship to just buy scarves
Even if you didn’t “purl” the swatch looks great to me!
[Reply]
did you look at my blog at my daughters (11 years old) knitted baby hat? She just got her first order for baby hats. She is so excited.
I have know how to purl…so, maybe I could do “Amy Purl” since my name is Amy also.
[Reply]
Those hats are beautiful and are putting me to shame.
Doing anything crafty is such a challenge for me. Let’s just say that I don’t seem to be naturally gifted at anything crafty so these things seem a tad more forced and more work than for most people>
[Reply]
It still looks great! Sometimes the best stitches are the ones you make up!
Steph
[Reply]
I think your scarf looks great and that your new stitch is cool! Don’t get discouraged, you weren’t doing it wrong, just different!
[Reply]
I did the same thing when learning how to knit. A nice older lady was over to visit and kindly told me that my purl rows were actually not purls at all! She then proceeded to mumble some greek name, at least to me anyway, about what kind of stitch it was. All I got was a smile and a, “keep practicing.” How humiliating!
Needless to say four hours later I managed to figure out how to do a purl stitch. It turns out I was twisting the yarn around some kind of way.
The next time the lady came over she went straight for my knitting bag and commented on how lovely my purl stitching was.-lol I guess she figured I would be determined enough to conquer it, especially after her comment.
[Reply]
Well it’s actually quite pretty though–maybe your happy accident is the beginning of knitting notoriety
[Reply]
Ha! Well, at least I am not alone. My mother-in-law was so sweet and said that it was really pretty, she just couldn’t figure out how I managed to do a stitch like that. All a learning experience, I guess
[Reply]
That’s so funny, Amy–thanks for sharing.
By the way, I tried your tip of posting that I wanted to buy shelves and organizing units, and no one took me up on it. Instead, I had to settle for just scoring other free stuff. =)
[Reply]
I really like this stitch. Would you please explain how you did it?
[Reply]
Ha! Oh my goodness- you really want to know how to do the Amy Purl? That is so sweet….
I will try to take pictures tonight and will post this very, very wrong stitch for everyone.
The best way I can explain it is that I put the needle in front, but enter straight up instead of down into front (as you would have done for a purl stitch). I then looped it on the outside and pulled it through to the other side through the other needle. It was basically the purl stitch, but completely backwards.
I will have my girlfriend take pictures tonight before I forget how I did it. Certainly adds a…um, unique look to any pattern.
You guys are too sweet!
[Reply]
I had a few of those how the heck did I manage that moments. Right now I”m working on a sweater and can’t for the life of me figure out what to do next so I’ll be calling my knitting friends to get some major help. Good luck learning that other purl stitch.
[Reply]