Very new to knitting... what am I doing wrong?

[Licorice1977]

Hiya!

I just started knitting a little over a week ago I went to a class over at the local Michaels craft store and so it began. Anyway, I'm supposed to be knitting a hat. I did the cast on thing (it was 46 cast on) and then started to knit away. It started to get really huge when I wasn't paying enough attention to counting the stitches, so I decreased the stitches. What I'm wondering, though, is what am I doing wrong that I would be adding a stitch each time I'm switching over to the other needle? I'm supposed to go back in less than a week with 11 inches of knitting so I can finish my hat, but with these increases and decreases, I don't think so. Can someone help?

Sunshine

[Jan in CA]

You could be picking up the stitch in between the stitches by accident or if you are knitting and purling you may be forgetting to move the yarn to the back when you change to knit stitches or the front when purling. When you first learn to knit you need to go slowly and pay attention so that your yarn is in the correct spot and you haven't accidentally poked it in between stitches.

Here's a whole thread that was created especially for new knitters getting get extra stitches. Take a look and see if that might be what you're doing.
http://www.knittinghelp.com/forum/sh...ad.php?t=32886

[suzeeq]

Sometimes if you have the yarn to the back over the top of the needle (like when you knit continental style) it pulls up the st so each leg of it looks like 2 separate sts. Hold the yarn a bit out the side, then around to the back and you can see just the one leg that you should knit into.

[nifer237]

I did this too when I first started and what I was doing was knitting into the last stitch without letting the working yarn hang down, behind. I didn't realize it and luckily I was making a plain old scarf, but once I realized that I didn't have to do that, all was well.