One good thing already: I am knitting more. It's getting a little bit easier every time. I am s-l-o-w-l-y mastering (well, maybe not mastering) the Continental method. I have the knit stitch down but purling? Not so much. It's work, baby. It's like my left hand leaves my body and has a mind of its own. I have to concentrate so hard to make my fingers do what they're supposed to. It took me forever to even get as far as I am. I really wasn't getting the written instructions. I'm a visual learner. When I decided to try Continental I just kept watching videos of the knit stitch on YouTube over and over again without trying it. I watched until I got it and could visualize myself doing it. Then when I picked up the needles and tried it, it was like my fingers just knew what to do. Amazing! I felt like Luke Skywalker or Caine. (Way to go, Grasshoppah.) Knowing how to knit Continental style literally changed my knitting life. It's so much faster! I whipped out a couple of hats on some circulars and reveled in my new knowledge. After I got over myself a little bit, I decided it was time to learn to purl. I have been doing the same thing as before: watching videos, visualizing, etc. And it has gotten a little easier. It has. I had a breakthrough a couple of weeks ago. I tried it out and it actually worked, sort of. It's just much harder and it's like training my fingers to do something they really, really don't want to do. My left hand keeps cramping up. I made a scarf in the mistake rib pattern and, in order to keep my sanity, I did almost the whole thing in my weird, half-assed English throwing style. It actually went pretty fast, but I did try a few rows in my still weak and awkward Continental method and it went much more slowly. And you can totally tell the rows I did because they're really uneven and wonky. It will come, I guess. I just need to sit down and really work at it.
Meanwhile. . . I did this! I started this scarf last spring and finished it in late summer, before I learned the Continental method. It went very slowly and it was a little tedious and I could only do twelve rows or so at a sitting before I got a little crazy. But I was really proud of myself when I finished. It's from Last Minute Knitted Gifts by Joelle Hoverson. I saw it in the Knitpicks catalog and ordered the book and the yarn (in the exact colors shown because I have no imagination or confidence in my own yarn-choosing abilities, apparently). It was actually a pretty easy pattern, which surprised me. It looks difficult and impressive, though, right?
Before Christmas, I used one of my gift certificates to buy some new yarn. I had been fondling the Baby Alpaca Grande at the quilt shop for several months but wasn't sure I liked the colors they had in stock. At the last Sanity Seekers meeting I scoped out the yarn and noticed they had gotten some more colors in.
Yummy! This yarn is unbelievably soft and squooshy. Like, incredibly soft and squooshy. I've been trying to figure out how I can afford to buy the fifteen or so skeins it would require to make a decent-sized afghan and then curl up in it and not leave until April or May. At $14.99/skein, that would be a pretty expensive afghan. But oh. my. god.Anyway, I could afford two skeins. I chose this beautiful heathered purple and hoped two skeins would be enough to make something I loved. I did some pattern searching on Ravelry and found a very simple pattern for a scarf. It worked up very quickly and I love it. I wish I could post a picture of it but sadly, Travis took the memory card out of our camera to put in his video camera and I don't know where it is. I will post, though, because it's awesome. It's incredibly cuddly and squishy and I love it. I wear it at every opportunity and force people to feel it. "Isn't it soft? Feel how soft it is!"
