Knit Hooded Cardigan

I have had a bag of yarn that was my grandmother's sitting in my closet since she passed away. It was from her stash and I have held on to it not quite sure what to do. It isn't anything fancy and the color is just plain white. I would love to know how old it is.

















I recently decided that I needed to find a pattern to work on through the summer. You know the kind that is fairly mindless with just a lot of back and forth knitting and purling. I came across this pattern and decided it was a good one to put my grandmother's yarn to use.














It's the kind of pattern I can pick up and put down, work on while watching my kids play at the beach, and it can be thrown into a bag and worked on while on a roadtrip this summer. I have never made a garment for myself before. I made a sweater for my daughter once and that is my only foray into anything beyond scarves, hats and blankets. I'll keep you posted as I work on it. Have a great weekend.

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Memorial Weekend

I hope everyone had a fantastic Memorial weekend. For me this weekend kicks off summer. We are always out of town for the weekend. We loaded up our trailer last week and headed out to the desert to landsail.














I didn't get very much knitting done out there, I was too busy chasing my two small children. We did manage some bike riding








Here is a hat I made to take on the trip





I'm still getting my pictures organized. When I have them done I'll post some more. Now off to do laundry and get ready to go camping in the mountains.

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Summer Project Ideas

Summer is upon us and my interest in knitting usually flags about this time of year. When I knit I love the imagery it produces. Cold winter nights, warm woolen socks on my feet. Or a cool autumn afternoon and a handknit hat or gloves, maybe a scarf as I walk through the woods. In summer those items aren't really of any use. I am sending a call out to all of you for ideas to knit for summer. Here are a few of mine

Summer shawl
Baby clothes and hats
Headband
Purses

I am going to dig through patterns of mine and maybe I can find a few to post that will inspire all of us to keep working on our projects through the summer.

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First Scarf

My second project. After the "fun" of the helmetliner I thought maybe I should try something simpler that wouldn't require me to stitch two steps and then tear three out. A scarf seemed like something I could tackle easily with confidence. I made this scarf for my husband out of alpaca wool.

Notice the lovely curling in of the sides ( I clearly had not learned the art of blocking at this point). When finished I presented it to my husband with love and the proviso that he wouldn't be required to wear it in public.

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About Me

I have learned to love knitting because I get a real sense of accomplishment with each project. I think I suffer from a mild form of attention deficit because if a project takes too long I can quickly lose interest. My mother and sister both enjoy sewing and I can only seem to get enough energy together for a Halloween project. I sew my kids costumes but that is as far as my sewing skills go. All the cutting and measuring and pinning, it really is too much for me. I have found that being home with two small children knitting is much easier. I can pick it up and put it down easily. There isn't a lot of clean-up between or during projects, and for the most part it is very portable. I encourage anyone out there looking for a new hobby to look into knitting.

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When I first created this blog I did nothing more then sign up for the account and then sit and wait for divine inspiration to descend upon me in the form of small anecdotes and interesting knitting tidbits that I could impart. As I said earlier I was not a blogger peruser or writer when I first created this site. And so it has sat untouched for almost a year. I wasn't completely lazy during that time I gave birth to my son and stayed busy juggling a newborn and a toddler all with a husband in grad school (I don't recommend that schedule to anyone). Back to my point, in the last few months I have started reading a blog. Not a knitting blog, just the blog of an author I enjoy. It started out with wanting to look up more information about her and when I googled her her website came up, it is a daily blog. Along with her blogs she has other information but I found myself glued to her blog. My morning routine now subsists of stumbling from bed, getting a cup of coffe and logging in to her blog. I read it everyday. Since this newest addition to my daily routine I have decided to start writing my own blog and sharing my trials and tribulations and maybe some good tips now and then about knitting. Since quitting the corporate world and staying home with my kids I have found at times that I crave adult interaction and my husband, while extremely supportive, doesn't want to sit and discuss the latest knitting book I picked up or if I should add a cable in my current project. I'm hoping that people will find and enjoy what they find here and maybe my world can expand a little more. Until next time...

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A little about myself

Hi all!

This is my first time blogging. I have never been one to read blogs but my sister is an avid blog surfer and she encouraged me to start my own blog in an effort to be more involved in the knitting community.

I have two children a daughter age 3 and a one year old son, and since having children I decided to take up knitting. It wasn't a completely random decision. My grandmother had taught me and my sister how to crochet and knit, respectively. So I decided that I wanted to be a mom who could knit her kids sweaters and scarves. Of course the picture in my head had me turning out beautifully crafted fair-isle sweaters every Saturday afternoon. Somehow that picture wasn't quite the reality when I bought a kit at Target for $9 and started on my first scarf.

I was surprised at how confused and turned around I got. I had to keep pausing the DVD and rewinding to watch the differences between purling and knitting. Once I had mastered stockinette stitch I decided that I knew it all and purchased the materials to make this helmet liner http://www.helmetliner.com/.

WOW. Not easy. Needless to say for a novice knitter probably not my best idea for a first time project. After A LOT of tearing out and redoing here is the end result.

My loving husband wears it out fishing in the winter time. Hopefully it isn't like a teenager who wears Grandma's handmade Xmas sweater out the door on her way to school and quickly changes out of it as soon as she is out of sight of her home....

More next time.

Postscript: I don't have a picture of my first scarf from the Target kit because my daughter seized it upon completion and it made it's way into her dress-up box and has since disappeared. Gone to the land of "lost toys" I'm sure (which for those of you don't know is the box of toys that are too dirty, destroyed, or just plain annoying to keep around and so they are gathered up and thrown out while the kids sleep). Later when questioned of their whearabouts a vague, "Gee honey I don't know it must be lost" is said by their mother with her fingers crossed behind her back and a silent apology for the small lie.

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