Novice Knitter. Making an afghan. 5 Colors – 65 Stitches Per Color – Size 11 (8mm) Needles. Advice? Size?

Question

My family has been knitting afghans for generations and I decided to try my hand at it. I only know the one basic stitch but it has been good enough for the eyelash yarn/standard yarn combo scarves that I have been making for a few years now…

I figure that for a Rainbow Afghan, I should keep things simple anyways and will stick with the one stitch… But what I’m wondering is, how wide would a “Throw” style afghan should be?

I don’t need it to be the size of, say a king or even a queen sized blanket but I’m not sure what dimensions I should be aiming for.

Any advice for a new knitter?

Answer 1

if you are using eyelash yarn keep you stitches 1 knit 1 purl across you wont see the stitch because of the yarn type

http://knitting.about.com/od/afghanpatte...

Sorry ! I misunderstood your question , here are some more instructions for you if you know how to to do a knit stitch then you can do a purl stitch, all you do is pull the wool on the inside for it and insert the needle at the back here are some visuals

http://knitting.about.com/od/learntoknit...

The yarn that you have will give you a bigger size if you are going to use it all ,it's better to have more than less , this way you wont  have to go and look for the dye lot and sometimes those are difficult to find, the size also depends on the needless that you use and they way that you knit ,everyone has a different way this is why they ask to measure the gauge when we knit, but it's only an Afghan so don't worry about it , who cares if it's a bit smaller or larger,

Answer 2

4 by 6 feet is fine for an afghan! It depends though on if that's the size you want. A modest "lap blanket" is on average 60" by 80", or 5' by 6-ish' It also depends on the weight of yarn you are using, bulky, worsted and so on. I think the size needles you've mentioned would be fine. Are you making your afghan all in one piece or in panels?