Before sitting down at the machine, have a plan and understand your blueprint.

As if you are building a house, when knitting sweaters there are 2 important considerations, a plan and a blueprint.

Before you start knitting you need to identify what you want to knit (a plan) and have a blueprint (a pattern) to make it happen.

As you are reading the blueprint there may be symbols or terms that aren't quite clear to you. You wouldn't start cutting lumber and pounding nails before you understand exactly what you were building. The same holds true for knitting a sweater.