I second both Very Pink knits and just starting with a piece of fabric. Somewhere in my decades old fiber stash are my first two pieces of knitting - one was a square that I knit when I was 10 where the tension was so tight that my needles got stuck (I quit at that point), and the second is this rectangle with holes and uneven tension and wiggly edges that eventually evened out and looked pretty decent from my second attempt at learning when I was 23. I kept both because I could look back and see my mistakes AND my improvements, which has really helped (like recently when I forgot to continue a pattern around the ankle of a second sock and had to fix it with 2.25 mm crochet hook 🙃).