Knitted diagonal baby blanket

Finally mailed it.  I'm gonna wait till the baby gets it and I hear about her reaction (hope she has one!) and then write a review at Lion Brand.  I'll write a complete review that will include my bad yarn experience.

I'm deciding what yarn and pattern to use for the next one.  Part of the fun is the fun of thinking and planning and shopping before you begin anew.

 

  

  

 

Scarf for my sister

Taa daa! It's blowing in the wind. The tag I made to go with it is below. It's garter stitch which means all knit stitches. Reta said I better learn to purl soon.

Tag

Life. Paths. Knitting.

Life
is
like
a
hand knitted
scarf.

Ernie wrote me back today. I was fairly floating after I read his email. We were friends in high school. People are so interesting. It's fascinating to hear of their past and I marvel at the paths they have taken to get where they are.

Last week I finished knitting a scarf that I'm overall pleased with. It turned out, may I say, beautiful. It's colorful. It's useful. And best of all, it's one-of-a-kind. Heh. And when I ran up the street to show it to Reta (she taught me to knit) the first thing I did was loudly announce that there were a lot of mistakes in it and the chenille covered them up well, and also I thought the knot where I connected new yarn to the old yarn really stood out. To prove it I tried to find the knot to show her. I thought I knew exactly where it was but it took me a good minute to find it.

Reta, almost 20 years my senior, watched me patiently then she told me in a very no nonsense manner, that no one else will see my mistakes. "Don't worry about them!" she explained. She said only I see every mistake and that's how knitting is. Everyone else will think it's a beautiful scarf. It was she who told me to keep knitting and stop pulling it apart and starting over every time I knitted an imperfect stitch. I immediately felt better about the mistakes that I imagined detracted from my work of art.

And in the very same way, I immediately felt better after I read Ernie's email to me. Ernie is very smart and intuitive. He gave me clarity.

Isn't life like that? Our mistakes are woven in, our imperfections part of the garment, but we can continue and end up with a beautiful life anyway; a life that's colorful, useful, imperfect, and one-of-a kind.

A knitter's prayer

I'm interested in making a prayer shawl. I found a prayer by Janet Bristow. This is the part I like best (it's not the complete prayer). It's good for knitting anything, not only shawls. I had a beautiful white prayer shawl once when our son was about three. He liked to sit and pray with me when he saw me use it. The dog chewed it up one day. It's not the same wearing your beautiful shawl after the dog chomps a few slobbery holes in it.

The idea of knitting prayers into a shawl appeals to me enormously. I like to find ways to incorporate prayer into our everyday life. Such a small thing like lighting a candle at dinner each night and saying "Jesus is the light of the world" keeps my family mindful in an everyday way that the soul transcends this earthly life. I want prayer to be everydayish for my family. I don't want it to be done only at night, in bed, alone before drifting off to dreamland. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I do it! Prayer is supernatural, but I want it to feel natural to my family.

When I get a cashier that I can't stand, like the one who rolled her eyes and spoke rudely to my husband, or when we got the cashier in the restaurant who rang us up and talked with her mouth full of food, I pray for them. It almost always works. I don't know how, it just does. At the very least it keeps me from having a minor meltdown! People sometimes behave awful because there's something bad in their life. Praying for them is like watching someone's mouth when they speak. Sometimes when people are speaking to us, we aren't really listening. We think we are, but it's not unusual to actually be collecting our own thoughts and forming our own reply while the speaker is talking, and thus we're not truely listening but thinking of how we will respond while we're listening. That's not really listening.

Tonight my son asked to learn how to knit! He adds depth and breadth to my everyday thoughts.

Good God

Guide me through the

knots,

kinks,

dropped stitches,

split yarn,

shredded fringe,

dye lot mismatches,

pattern mistakes,

errors,

and the myriad other “issues” that get in the way of my centeredness!

*

Help me to see that these annoyances:

knotted emotions,

kinked plans,

dropped dreams,

split relationships,

shredded hopes,

mismatched friendships,

mistaken assumptions,

errant goals

are actually metaphors of life!

Knitting progress

A week and a day

It's about 20 inches long now. Whew, it's taking a long time. I have to make it 76 inches, then fold ends up to form pockets. I might not do the pocket part. It seemed like a good idea when I found the pattern, but I'll decide for sure when I'm close to finished. The yarn I chose is fabulous for hiding mistakes, and there be a few mistakes in thar! I started with 17 stitches and ended up with 19, so my friend fixed it. Then twice I dropped stitches (which means I skipped them) and she fixed it once and now I know how to fix it. I've ended up with 18 and stayed with that number. I've been recounting them after every single row I knit to ensure I have 18, not 17, not 19. I intended to make a matching cap, but hmmmm, truthfully, caps crush my hair flat and my kind of bangs aren't great in a cap. I don't know if a scrunchie will be enough of a complement piece though.

The other morning we had a javelina at our door. Didn't get to see it, we were sleeping, but our neighbors watched it and told us about it!

There's a piggy little squirrel here. He's a cutie and always looking for things to take into his hole. It doesn't have to be food! He stuffs his cheeks till they're huge. Today I saw him bunch up a paper towel into a little ball and run to his hole. He tried to take one of our son's miniature flags but couldn't manage pulling it into his burrow so we found it just outside the entrance to his abode. Then the top to our jack-o-lantern went missing. Can't find it. I think that squirrel figured he found a treasure and took it home.

I 'm doin' it

My first knitting

Only 70 inches to go and it's going to be a scarf. Knitting is very exciting. I wake up in the morning thinking about it. This is my third day. I practiced on day one and two and started my real project yesterday! I'm fresh in the morning and by bedtime I'm all kinked up. Kinks get in my shoulders, my back, my neck and my hands. Now I've read that you should get up and walk around a bit every 20 minutes. Good idea. It's a whole new world! I always thought knitting was such a mystery. Now I'm a knitter! Michele calls it 'needle arts' which sounds very cool. I already want to make a matching scrunchie and a beanie with a BIG pom.

Continental knitting video (This is the way I learned.)
KnittingHelp.com (A super good forum.)
KnittingFairy.com (I must learn to make this knitted scrunchie!)