Well hello there!

It's been nearly a month since my last blog! Apparently, I have been so sucked in to crafting and other business that I've neglected my blog.. as I tend to do. Oops.

Where to begin?

Crafting news (and my word, is there a lot of it):

I am hereby deeming August 2nd my official knitting anniversary. This was the date that I successfully completed my very first KNIT project. It was a baby bootie, following the Oh Baby Baby pattern. Ambitious for a first practice project? Absolutely. Did I need help? Surprisingly, not as much as I expected. I made it to this point before I had to seek clarification from more seasoned 'hookers gone knitting':



After their wonderful, non-judgemental help (including a lovely lass that actually went ahead and made a bootie in the same pattern just to be sure she gave me sound advice, complete with step-by-step photos), and a few knittinghelp.com videos, I had this 8 hours after beginning:



Not the prettiest! But, not too shabby if I do say so myself. For a first time anyway. I even had to use the Kitchener stitch! Yikes. Now, the finished bootie was most likely too large for even my 2.5 year old. But the point in the first place was strictly for practice in mechanics, equipment, and reading knitting patterns. I was satisfied.

[ENTER stage LEFT; Knitting Craze]

The next day, I purchased Debbie Stoller's 'Stitch 'N Bitch: The Knitter's Handbook. Awesome read, amusing at times, very informative, and some great projects. I'm also a resource hog, so having this in my collection just makes me that much happier. The very same day, I started the Technicolor Techno-Cozy. It was finished the next day, though the velcro closure was not added until the following week.


On August 4th (notice, this is just 2 days after seriously beginning to knit), I grabbed what was left of some dark green worsted cotton, and got to work on Elvish Leaves Dishcloth. I'd been eyeing this particular pattern for months, thinking it looked lightyears away for me to actually do.



It was finished 2 days later. Not perfectly, but without difficulty.

On August 8th, I decided to frog what I had of the crochet Emerald Baby Blanket I was raving about in my last crafting blog post. Why? Well, for one, I found a different, knitted pattern that I wanted that yarn for. And for two... there's absolutely no challenge in 30 inches of single crochet stitches.

Instead, I began Baby Chalice Blanket. Honestly, it was going pretty well. But then, I was working on it one day while the kids were distracting me. Bad idea when working lace. I ended up with a number of stitches that was way off from what it should have been, couldn't figure out where I had messed up, and couldn't find a safe place to frog back to. And so, it was frogged after 3 days of work. :-( I'm sure I will start it again at some point.

I took a break and decided to come back to the Honeycomb Washcloth I mentioned in my last crafting blog post, that I had given up on. I started from scratch. Somehow, after just 3 weeks, it was a piece of cake. I don't have a picture of the finish object, but you get the gist:



Busy little bee, huh?

I felt refreshed after that. So what did I do? I decided it was time to work on more lace. But not just lace... lace combined with cables. Because I'm apparently a bit of a masochist. I can't find the link to the Cable and Lace Baby Blanket right now, but apparently, it's supposed to look like this when finished:



And I think it will, when it's done. :-) Was doing pretty okay with it, until the cable join on the circulars I was using decided to tear. So this particular blanket is on hold until I get my Knit Picks Options sometime next week.

So obviously, there's no way I'm twiddling my thumbs until then, right? Right.

This past Thursday, we found out the gender of the currently almost grapefruit-sized little person occupying my uterus.




After 2 boys, we are 100% having a girl! Wave hello to Morgana. We are stoked! We'll have a little girl under the protection of not 1, but 2 older brothers! But I wasn't surprised. I knew there was a reason I'd been stockpiling girly yarns and patterns but not touching them! So today, I started on my first 'original' pattern, which will ultimately consist of 4 seperate garter stitch squares, 2 in a lovely bulky-weight pink/brown self-striping yarn, and 2 in that same squishy bulky-weight yarn, though I haven't yet decided between black or brown. And of course a border of some sort. Yay for making things up as you go along!

I suppose that's it for now, that took much longer than I expected it to. That's what I get for not keeping up with this blog, I guess :-)