It's safe to say that my knitting has reached a much higher level than it was pre-grad school. In college I knit a handful of things - blankets for both my nephews (which, if I looked at them now, I'm pretty sure I'd probably shake my head in shame), a pair of mittens, some scarves, a couple head things. And then after graduation I started in on big blankets. Just a couple that first year, and like 18 since then. (Slight exaggeration. But I think at least 7 or 8 since I started graduate school. Two more on needles as we speak.) Not to mention many more hats, scarves, now some fingerless mittens, some headbands, etc. I guess I haven't really expanded that much, but I'm a lot more into it now. More knowledgeable (although, still very much not knowledgeable). Exploring new territory of better needles and yarn beyond my go-to acrylic Caron Simply Soft. Exciting stuff.
Helping me along in all this is my extremely invaluable resource, Ravelry.com. I love that place. Not only do they have patterns galore (free and non-free), each pattern has a section for comments, places it was mentioned in discussions on the discussion board, yarn suggestions (shows you what yarns people have used to do each particular pattern), people's finished projects, etc. It's awesome. And they have a section for yarn, where you can look up various yarns and get details about it, as well as people's comments, and projects that people have used to make with each yarn. And their discussion boards are great, and it's just all-around fabulous. Of course, sometimes it makes it hard because there's just SO MANY PATTERNS and there are SO MANY COMMENTS and everyone has their own opinion about things (particularly when it comes to things like yarn - I've been using that more lately, since I know next to nothing about any real yarns, so I want to see what's soft, what's not, etc, but then with a lot of yarns you get half the people saying they thought it was soft, half saying it wasn't, some saying they had this or that problem with it, others saying they had no problems with it). But in general, it's very helpful.
And tonight? Oh, tonight. It's so wonderful. See, knitters are weird, and when we see knitted things in movies we watch, we think "Hey, I wonder if I could make that!" And often, someone can, and makes a pattern for it. Like, there are lots of threads about all the knitted stuff in the new Harry Potter movie, and people have either found similar patterns or tried to figure it out themselves. So, tonight I was watching Elf. Near the end, when Jovie shows up near Central Park and starts to sing "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" (which, man, I wish they had sung more than one song over and over. I understand the choice of that song at that point, but I'm not a huge fan to begin with, and it's minutes upon minutes of it. Oh well). She's got this super cute hat on, which I've never really noticed before, but man I sort of want it. (I tried to find a picture on Google to put here, with no luck.) So I hopped onto Ravelry, did a search in the discussion boards to see if anyone's talked about it before, and lo and behold, I found a few threads from last year - and two patterns people had created to make a hat similar to hers! So, I'm pretty super stocked about that. Of course, I have no idea how it'd look on me...but I think I'll try it anyway. Well, maybe after Christmas. I HAVE SO MUCH TO KNIT FOR CHRISTMAS. I'm never going to get it all done. But that's ok. Some things might be late. Oh well.
The important thing to remember here is...yay knitting!
