So I've got knit and purl down...

Being a newly minted knitter, I thought I would put together an initiation post of sorts, a guide to making the transition from "Okay, so knit is when I stick the needle in back and for purl, it's in the front" to "So, I'm knitting this sweater, but I'm changing it to 3/4 sleeves and a v-neck instead of crew and I stuck in some short-row shaping, and, oh, I also added a little lace around the hem." I found it a bit daunting, once I'd knit scarves for everyone I knew, to branch out into less rectilinear shapes. Or, you know, anything that required me to read a pattern.

Pattern reading was, for me, actually the biggest hurdle. I could gather that "k" and "p" stood for "knit" and "purl" but after that, I floundered. The pattern would say "inc" and I would think, okay, but how do I increase? How do I decrease? What, for the love of wool, is a yarnover?

I learned how to knit in 2004, knit furiously for eight months and then stopped completely. I was bored with scarves, I didn't know how to make anything else, and every time I tried to read a pattern, it ended in frustration. I finally met a woman who took the time to explain these transitory mysteries of knitting to me, and I've been gaily altering my way through patterns ever since. So here, after that long-winded introduction, is my primer on learning to read a pattern, explanations of knitting terminology and links to various sites that I found helpful when just beginning this whole knitting business.

For the sake of your scroll bar, I've broken this post into several, so just click on the links below to take you to the post with that topic.

--> Please note that these posts are under construction and so some links don't yet exist - once I've wrestled this into some kind of shape, I'll remove this disclaimer.

Definitions

Techniques

Yarn! (A Guide thereof)

Please do let me know if anything here is unclear, wrong, should be cut/expanded/whatever. I'd like to make this as helpful as possible, and I always welcome constructive criticism.