First projects

My very first projects were fairly small and, I think, pretty simple.  I wanted to knit some baby booties for my niece because her feet were so small that normal ones were not fitting her.  So I started with them.  I showed them off to one of my classes and a classmate of mine asked me to make a pair for her to give to a friend - that was the green pair.

I also couldn't decide if I wanted to knit or crochet - so I did both, and I continue to do so.  I made a cabled crochet headband which really took some figuring out at first.  It isn't a hard pattern now that I know what it says, but when I started I had no idea what it means to "sk next st, bpdc next, fpdc the sk st."  (That is, skip the next stitch, back post double crochet the next, front post double crochet the skipped stitch).  But, I did eventually figure it out.  I gave my first one to my younger sister, and I made a second one for me because I liked it so much:

I also decided that it would be nice to just practice straight knitting without any distractions.  I knitted some fingerless gloves straight garter stitch and I practiced both my knits and my purls.  There are two stitches in knitting - knits and purls.  Everything that is knit is some combination of those, as well as skipping stitches or working some stitches over others.  When you look at most knit items you see little "v" shapes all on one side.  Those are the result of knit stitches.  On the other side you will see little ridges which are the result of purls.  I wont get too in depth as to how that works because there are other places for you to find that information.  But if you knit one side, then turn the work (because it is now on the second needle) and knit that row,  and continue in that pattern you will get what is called a garter stitch.  That is what these gloves are.  Likewise, if you purl every stitch of every row, you will end up with garter stitch.  A purl is what happens on the back side of a knit stitch, or vice versa.

In any case, this was the result - I seamed up the side after I had completed enough rows of a flat piece.  The yarn was multi-colored, I had bough it super cheap when I first started.  I learned a lot from these gloves about casting on and off (beginning and ending a knitted piece) and how loosely to do that.  It was a lot of fun to learn.