Ali McAuliffe

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