After looking around on Ravelry a fair bit, I chose Peasy, a pattern by Heidi Kirrmaier, for my first knitting adventure. It seemed like the perfect project for crochet-lover and knitting neophyte like me: a cardigan with a little lacy motif on the front (can't do without lace entirely!), and lots of straightforward stockinette stitching. Because it was my first purchase in the knitting department, I read through the reviews, and found that many who'd knit it before had had problems figuring out the pattern. Hum, not a good start, but I really liked the look of the cardi, so I went ahead and made my first knitting purchase.
Peasy isn't exactly difficult, but it requires that you read and understand the first part of the pattern (i.e. the yoke, as it's a top-down knit pattern) ahead of time. Arguably, reading a bunch of symbols doesn't make for relaxed reading. As a crocheter, this is the major fault I find with knitting patterns: no charts, just lines and lines of abbreviations for different stitch types, "k1, k2tog, k2, yo, k1, k1, ssk" ... goodness, how can one know what's going on? Is there a reason I'm missing why knitting patterns don't include even simplified charts? It would make it so much easier! And certainly, it would make making Peasy a lot easier!
With no chart, and as my first knitting project in so long, I too had some difficulties in the beginning: the instructions, in fact, are divided into piece sections (raglan, lace, neckline and so on) which involve a lot of going back and forth between the single sections at any given row, and make it easy to make mistakes (not to mention how easy I always find it to make silly math mistakes, such as making 6 repeats when the instructions read: "repeat last 2 rows 6 times"! shh, don't tell my kids about my terrible math!).
So, after ripping it back - or rather, patiently "unstitching" my work, because I was so afraid to lose my markers' place that I didn't dare ripping - stitch by stitch, row by row on several occasions, I made myself a little chart, à la crochet. Ha! Now I was able to see clearly how Peasy was contructed as a whole, which instantly made Peasy easy for me!
Knitting right along with the help of my chart, I completed the yoke and one sleeve in short time. Who knows, maybe I'll become a better knitter because of all the years of crocheting!
