Ali McAuliffe

This week I am going to give you guys instructions on how to make the blanket I have started on, and walk you guys through my process. I have already knit two balls of yarn and have started on a third. There are two ways that you can knit the rows together. Both ways you you start off by knitting your first stripe. Then when you move onto the second stripe, you can either knit it into the first or knit it separately then sew them together later. I decided that I would just knit them separately, because knitting the second stripe into the first was a bit complicating. Also now I can wait until the end to decide what order to put them into. So now how to knit the stripes, first you have to cast on 13 stitches onto your needle. To cast on you start with a loop on your needle, slide the needle in your right hand through the the bottom of the loop on the other needle, so your right needle should be behind the left one. Now take your yarn and wrap it around your right needle, switch the ri

This week I was waiting for my yarn to come in, so I could start my blanket, but I had a little bit of extra yarn. I started on a different project, which is a flower rug. You start by casting on 80 stitches then you knit a row. Then you knit two stitches together, which is a new technique I had to practice, but then that leaves you with 40 stitches. You then repeat that, knit and knit two together pattern, until you are down to 20 stitches. I have not done the next step yet, but you are supposed to sew them together, so it looks like a flower instead of a line. This is how they turned out, I rolled them up so they look like the flowers, but have not sewed them together yet. I think I will continue with my rug when I am done with my blanket, but I wanted to practice knitting before I started knitting my actual blanket. So, I took my extra yarn that I had and practiced the knits I was going to have to do for my blanket. This is how my practice knitting came out. Then my

This week I finished knitting my scarf. I still have to knit the ends of the scarf together, because it is a cowl scarf, which is a round scarf that comes together. It is looking pretty good so far, except when I knit, I knit my stitches a little too tight. So my scarf is a little smaller than I think it is supposed to be, but it still looks right. I accomplished my goal for this week, which was to finish knitting my scarf and I am hoping to start my blanket here soon, but I still need to get the yarn. Also, I am still very ahead on my plan, so I think that I am going to be able to get a lot more of my blanket done in the time span that we have than I thought I was going to be able to do. For my blanket, I need to work on not knitting so tight, so it turns out the size it is supposed to be in the end. 

I have really been enjoying this genius hour. At first I was struggling, but now that I have got the hang of it I like knitting. So I finished my hat that I was working on last week, and it looks okay, but I'm not sure if I did it correctly. I may have used the wrong yarn for that project, I'm not sure, the yarn is supposed to be a little stretchy and it is in some parts, but not in others. One thing that I know I did wrong was that when I cast on my stitches to start the project I cast them on too tight, so the base of the hat was a little tight. The hat still looks pretty good though. Since I finished my hat, I decided that I would start on a scarf. I am about halfway through with my scarf, and it is looking pretty good. Knitting does not take as long as I thought it would, so I am pretty far ahead on my plan. I hoping to finish my scarf by next week, and then I want to start on a blanket.

While working on my genius hour this week I had some struggles. I had gotten the basics of the knit stitches and purl stitches down, so I tried finishing off a project by binding the stitches off. This went perfectly fine, it was easy and simple. This is how my final practice stitches looked. After I had practiced these techniques and got them down, I decided that I would try one of the projects that they give to me in the back of my book. The project was a type of hat, it was really difficult and I could not figure out how to do it. I would get my stitches cast on, then the next row you are supposed to knit two stitches, purl two stitches, and continue that all the way down. I was doing the stitches loose but they kept ending up really tight to the needle so when I would go to the next row of stitches I wouldn't be able to get my other needle into the yarn. I kept taking it off and trying again, but still couldn't get it right. So, I went and looked in my book to see spec

I decided I wanted to learn how to knit for my second Genius Hour. When I started it was not as easy as I thought it was going to be. My knitting supplies had two pairs of knitting needles and came with a small book. I used the book to begin learning the basic steps and I struggled using the pictures in the book at first. It took me quite awhile, but once I figured it out it was super easy. I started by learning how to cast on a stitch, which is pretty simple. Casting on is making stitches onto one of your needles,so you have a row of stitches to start knitting with. These are how my two ways of casting on turned out. There are two different ways to knit, a knit stitch and a purl stitch, this is the other thing that I tried this week. I practiced knitting stitches, and then a practiced purling stitches. A purl stitch is basically a reversed knit stitch. In the picture on the left is my attempt on doing the knit stitch. The picture on my right was supposed to be two rows of knit s