Continental, wha?

Yesterday was my Two Hand Two Color headband class. It was good, overall. See, I had somehow managed to forget the important fact that two handed knitting requires knitting Continental. Oops. I don't do that. It wasn't a prerequisite for the class - I wasn't the only one learning it for the first time. But I'm slow with new things of that sort. Once I get going with it I'll be fine but I am sloooow in the beginning. So we start out learning continental in the round (so I do only need to know the knit stitch so far) and I think I'm doing o.k. I think, "Wow! I'm knitting continental!" We add the other colors in as stripes first and she teaches us a good tip for adding a color (knit the first stitch of the new color round with both the old color and the new color held together then drop the old color. When you get to that stitch again, only knit the new color stitch and just let the other one fall off the needle. Pull it tight and voila, no hole or gap). We moved on to actually fair isling (word? probably not.) and she showed us how to carry the other yarn across with us and hold it in - very cool. Did I mention this was also my first time with a chart? Granted this is a very basic chart but the things mystify me, I am much more a written learner than a chart learner. Also? I think I will stick to charts in the round (which isn't so bad since I love socks!) since the whole read it right to left one time and left to right the other time thing when you are working flat is extra confusing. Then she comes around and shows me that I have mysteriously started picking the yarn the wrong way and am now knitting continental with twisted stitches. Blast! Now I am feeling very lost and exasperated. But she showed me again and I *think* I've got it. I think what I really needed was some extra time to practice continental before the two color part was thrown in.

Here it is so far, it still doesn't look like much of course. You're looking at a round of white (the second color that will be the snowflakes too) then a round of the light pink (accent color) followed by more dark pink. Then you have the first round with two color work in it, here let me get a closeup. That little white stitch in the top middle is the bottom point of a snowflake... That's as far as I got.

The bottom looks odd like that because it gets folded up under along with an identical piece that will be on the top and then gets seamed. So that the headband is a double thickness.

The thing I'm worried about now is that I don't have time to go back to my headband for awhile now - I have to finish my homework for the Log Cabin Pillow class and I have to finish this sock for my sister because her birthday party is this coming Sunday instead of two weeks from now (!!!). So I might have forgotten everything by the time I pick it back up again. I've been doing some of the knitting on my Log Cabin Pillow homework continental but I keep subconsciously falling back into english knitting since I'm more comfortable that way. I need a local continental knitting friend. Katie, don't you knit continental? Come visit me! ;-)