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...