In Which I Knit Socks

So here I am again.

My last post to this blog was in November and a lot has happened then. So much has happened that I actually did not pay attention to any of my emails, ravelry, or any blogs that I follow for almost the whole month of December. Now that I've caught up with everything and gotten through the crazy that has been these past two months I felt it was time for an update.

Apart from my grandmother getting the stomach flu on Thanksgiving day and passing it on to my dad who then passed it on to me (this was the begining of the crazy), then finally starting to work three days a week, and all the other stuff that goes along with Christmas including spending 7 hours at church on Christmas eve. I have actually gotten a lot of knitting done. I have had my first ever Christmas knitting, been knitting to get rid of my stash, and am now working on my knitting new years resolutions.

Chirstmas knitting always has a good story with it. I've heard of many from other knitters which include such fun things as sleep depravation and finishing hats to go in stocings in the wee hours of Christmas morning. My story is this - I was only making Christmas gifts for two people, my Mom and my Brother. For my brother I choose to make a Jayne hat and a set of juggling balls. For mom I was making a wrap she picked out. I started both of these projects very early on so I was sure that I would have plenty of time. Due to this feeling of not needing to rush I worked on my Christmas projects sporadically and worked on other projects in between.

The week before Christmas I suddenly realized how little time I had left and how little yarn I had left for mom's wrap. I ordered more online, hoped it would show up soon, and set to work on finishing Kevin's gifts. A long doctors visit that was mostly waiting gave me time to finish the Jayne hat and start sewing up one of the juggling balls. A few nights later I was up at midnight watching Legaly Blond and finally filling the juggling balls, they went under the tree the next day.

During that time my yarn that I had ordered showed up I opened it on the Tuesday a week before Christmas and suddenly realized it was the wrong yarn. I had accidentally ordered the yarn I had used for the Jayne hat. I frantically ordered more and it didn't show up until the Saturday before Christmas. I frantically worked to finish the last sleeve and was up until 1 a.m. on the 23rd sewing it up it was wrapped on Christmas Eve.

For Christmas I was given among other nifty tools a yarn meter, so I immediately went to work measuring all my yarn and planning projects for it. I now have great plans for using up almost all of my yarn before I go to college in order to make it easier to travel and store (it's much easier to store nothing than a whole lot of something).

Then the new year came and I made some resolutions. I read the Knitting Daily and one might notice the banner on the side of my blog saying that I was a Fearless Knitter for 2008. I believe I lived up to that name too, I made my first sweater and it fits, and I tackled my first Christmas knitting as well as other things. Now I also have a banner proclaiming myself to be a Fearless Knitter in 2009 and I began to wonder how I would live up to that name. I came up with three ideas. I decided that in the course of this year I would conquer my fears of socks, lace, and colorwork.

I began eagerly last week with socks. I can now proudly say I have knitted a sock and am knitting it's mate and have plans for more!! The rest of the resolutions will hopefully come to fruition in the course of this year.

That's all I have for now, I'm off to finish my second sock!

Beginnings and Mistakes

Alright....

I obviously haven't actually used this blog since i started it, but i think now is a good time to start.

2008 seems to be a year for new beginnings for me. I have and am using a treadmill in my house, i have recently started playing the piano a bit, i have started a dvd collection so i have plenty to watch while i knit, i'm doing my Bible study every day, and i have started actually writing in this blog.

So... yay for beginnings.

Speaking of beginings, yesterday i picked up a knitting project that i have not worked on in months. it is the Doctor Bag from Knit2Together. i fell in love with this bag when i saw it, started it as soon as i could, and then about a foot into the back panel i put it down and it landed in my hibernation pond.

a couple of days ago however i found myself with absolutely nothing to knit until i get a set of size 2 dpns in the mail. so i went over to my hibernation pond picked the Doctor Bag back up and fell back in love with it.

Today i was out with my friends and we stopped in a starbucks. luckily i already had a jamba juice smoothie with me, so i didn't have to actually buy starbucks coffee. Anywho - i brought out my knitting while my friends were talking about horses (some big horse thing is coming up tomorrow) and began the decreases at the end of the back panel. i quickly realized i did not have the right number of stitches. ARRG!!!!

knowing that if i had to rip this whole piece out i would just give up on it entirely, i tried to figure out how i could fix it and still make it look decent. there are now a bunch of math figures on my pattern as i was trying to figure out if it was something wrong in the pattern or something i did wrong. at first i thought there was something wrong with the pattern, but later this evening i realized that it was knitter error. My first big knitting mistake of the year. yay.

A new beginning for me, however, would be that i managed to fix the mistake with a little bit of figuring and the bag will still look fine. WOOT.

Tomorrow I begin some of my regular activities and i can begin more frequent knitting in public, my favorite kind of knitting because then people look at me funny. At the moment i am trying to figure out if i will be able to knit in the dentists chair tomorrow so that i can keep my mind off the sharp things in my mouth while my teeth are cleaned.

Till Next Time,
Kathryn

P.S. other exciting news that absolutely does not relate to knitting - I'M GOING TO SEE SWEENY TODD ON STAGE THIS MONTH!!!!! me and my brother and a friend of his are going at the end of this month and i have been "squee"'ing all night.