Ravelerrific

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!

Up the wazooooooo

I haven't posted much, I know, but I've been knitting lots! In the last month or so, I've made and sent: a baby blanket and two baby hats (not sure how well they fit, but hopefully they're at least appreciated); a super-awesome afghan that I was tempted to keep for myself, made extra long for my extra tall brother's birthday; a cable hat and scarf set for my sister's birthday (which I hope turned out ok; I used a kind of yarn I've never used before, so I don't know how well it'll hold up), plus a calorimetry for her too; and I finished an infinity scarf for a friend that I had on the needles for something like a month, and isn't that big, but because of the way it's done each row is realllllly long and for some reason I get bored more easily with really long rows, so it ended up taking me longer than it should have (a month for that, while I got my brother's 7+' x 5' afghan, or thereabouts, done in just a couple of weeks); and I also finally finished off this green scarf I had started a year and a half ago, and got pretty close to finished and I have no idea why I didn't finish. But now it's done. Oh, and I finished that other scarf I had a few pictures of on here, where I couldn't decide if I should do the blue or the green backing. And now I currently have a hat on the needles (which took backseat to my sister's gifts for a little while), and I think three different scarfs I'm doing for no one in particular. Oh, one is for someone in particular. And then a shawl/scarf thing I've wanted to make for a long time now, and finally got yarn for. For myself. :-)

I have pictures of all or most of these, and maybe I'll update this with them one of these days.

I have tons more projects on the docket for the next couple of months. At least two requests for fingerless gloves, which I really need to get around to. Two blankets I want to do for Christmas gifts. I think two more hats I want to do for Christmas gifts too. A few little Christmas things. I feel like there's more, too...but I guess that's more than enough. I need to get yarn for the blankets, but I think I have yarn for everything else. Maybe not the hats; I have to see what colors the recipients want. But it's cool. OH. And this isn't necessarily Christmas-related, but there are a few babies that will be born in the first few months of the new year, so I need to think about fun baby gifts I can do for them. I do have plenty of baby yarn. I love baby yarn. Such a weakness of mine.

I'm so glad I'm a knitter.

So many patterns, so little time...

I spent a couple of hours tonight looking through a discussion thread in a forum on Ravelry about obscure/little-known patterns people had found or had done. It's like 122 pages long, and was started over two years ago, so there's a lot of stuff in there. I didn't look through the whole thing, but even with what I have gone through, I found so many things I want to knit. Man. There are some super cute patterns out there, people! And I have to make this: there's a pattern I found called a John Muir Scarf. I sort of love John Muir. It's basically because of him that we have national parks. (Well, him and some other people, of course.) So, I'm definitely going to have to do that.

My problem is I finish things I've been working on, and then don't know where to go next because what if I pick something wrong for someone, they don't like the particular pattern or something? Well. I think I decided that I'm going to start just knitting patterns that I want to knit. And maybe I'll just have a stash of things, and try to guess what any particular person might like, or just let them pick something out themselves.

Or I won't. Who knows.

I do know this: if I ever have kids, I'm probably going to knit them those weird/awkward/embarrassing things people knit for kids and make them wear because they're kids, and what do they know? Like...super-cute reindeer hats. Or snowman hats. Thankfully I haven't gotten into sweaters yet, so I won't be knitting awkward sweaters a la Mrs. Weasley.

Speaking of, there's a website with tons of awesome Harry-Potter related knitting patterns. I doubt I'll ever do any in actuality, but they're fun to think about! (And according to that site, 39 days until HP 7.1 comes out!)

Gosh. I love knitting. I so want to be better at it. Very much.

Can't I keep it?

You might have guessed that I'm knitting an afghan. One of the, oh, four projects I currently have going.

I'm actually almost done this afghan, which is good, because it needs to be done. I've worked on it so much, as fast as I can. It's great, because the pattern is super easy - knit 8, purl 8, knit 8, etc, across the row, then purl 8, knit 8, purl 8 across the next. Every ten rows, switch it around. Lovely. It's wonderful and mindless and thus I can do it while sitting in a lecture (only once, and only when I had first started it - it's much too big to cart around now!), or while watching a movie, or, my favorite, while reading - as long as I have a good setup for whatever I'm reading so I don't have to hold it open. Knitting still takes two hands. Haven't yet figured out a way around that...

Point is, though, this thing is large. And after only a few weeks. I'll finish it tonight.

In the meantime, I'm sitting in my windowseat, with my window slightly open despite the fact that it's only mid-50s. Delicious, but a little chilly too. (I could just close the window, but fresh air is so nice. And I like the reminder that it's finally fall.) And therein lies the beauty of knitting...I get to use the afghan while I work on it! And man. This is one super awesome afghan. I want to keep it. I hope the recipient likes it (hopefully he/she will, since he/she did request it at one point, but I'm not entirely sure that the request is still valid...), but if not, I'll gladly take it back for myself! Mmm. It's so lovely.

I'll stop tooting my own horn now. (Not that there's much I can take credit for, really. I'm just following a pattern. An easy pattern at that. But still. It's awesome.)

Yarn addiction: I has it.

Oh man. So, for my birthday I got a gift card to Michael's from one of my friends. Yes. And, thankfully, there's a Michaels a few miles away, which I had seen several weeks ago when driving with my roommate.

Gosh. I turn into such a weird person when I go peruse the yarn selection at craft stores. (Not so much at independent knitting stores, maybe because their yarn is so pricey. I mean, it's better quality, and nicer, and all that, but more expensive, so I don't tend to buy yarn at those stores. Not at this stage in the game, anyway.) I was there at Michael's, and I had never been to this one so I had to acquaint myself with the layout and where the different brands were and everything. Apparently they just recently expanded their yarn selection, but haven't quite yet gotten the actual yarn to fill in all the spots, so it was kind of sparse today. (And they didn't have the color of a particular brand that I needed to finish that afghan I'm working on.) But...oh man. Even with that, it was so hard not to walk out of there with more than I did. (And I walked out with too much as it is.) I'm such a sucker for yarn. Especially baby yarn, which was mostly what I got. I do have tentative plans for some of it, which is good. And I'll find projects for the other stuff.

I also ventured to the JoAnn's which is like two stores down from the Michael's in that shopping center. It's a small, dingy Jo-Ann's, especially compared to the one I'm used to back home, but they had the yarn that I actually needed, in the color I needed. Unfortunately, neither had good candles (I was hoping one or the other would have a pumpkin spice candle I could get, since I need one. As much as one can need a candle, anyway). But it was still lovely. And it's surprising - my yarn ventures tend to be less expensive than I expect. So that's good. I mean, I buy acrylic yarn typically, which is the cheap stuff, but whatever. It's machine washable! And I've gotten some good afghans out of Caron Simply Soft. Dude. I love that stuff. I don't know how well it holds up over time, but so far so good. And for babies, the Bernat Softee Baby is delicious. Those are pretty much my two exclusive yarn brands, depending on what I'm making. I've used various other things for various other projects, but I'm definitely a big fan of those.

I wish I had eight arms, so I could knit multiple things at once. Sigh.

(Today also made me anxious to get my new bag - which should be delivered on Wednesday, yay! The knitting I carry with me in my purse got a little tangled with my keys today. Everyone made it out unscathed, but it was a harrowing few minutes there. But the bag I'm getting will have separate knitting sacks in which to put projects to keep them separated from other stuff in the bag, and it also has a key clip so my keys will stay put. Double yay!)

Friday Night In

Scarfy

So, remember that scarf I mentioned in my last post? Since I wasn't feeling great about the multi/light green combo, and because I had two different skeins of the multi, I decided to try it with the dark blue I was thinking about. This way, I didn't have to take apart the whole green combo in case I decided I didn't like it with blue. Anyway. Irrelevant now, because it's so much better with the blue:

Dark blue on one side, light green on the other, and multi in the middle. It looks so different with the blue! I like it a lot better. Guess now I have to find another use for the green...(I have three skeins of it left over from an afghan I made last year and overestimated on. Anyone like the color? Want me to make anything with it? Suggestions?)