Progress before the big trip!

On Tuesday, we're leaving for South Carolina to attend a wedding for a close friend of my boyfriends. We all went to HS together, and he's in the wedding party. I knew I wanted to use my scarf to kill time while we drove, but I couldn't find the motivation to get working on it to the point I could learn to change colors. Well I finally did it! How you ask?

Well, maybe motivated isn't the right word, but I found myself getting bored while knitting because I couldn't look up so most TV was right out, and I don't get many channels to being with having an antenna instead of cable. So I'd do maybe a row or two and just feel blah about the whole thing and not want to continue. But that was all solved when I came across PODCASTS! Woot!

I have a few I listen to regularly, such as a few from NPR and the knitpicks when it looks interesting. Gives me at least an hour to work on this scarf, and I know have the confidence to do another for Becky (and the money :P) and a pair of socks for my grandmother. That will be interesting. Plan to do them in that order since I want to get Becky's to her ASAP since she's in Alaska and it's already getting cold. And grandma's been whining about good wool socks for winter on and off since she found out I'm learning to knit...so subtle :P

So since I have the money and don't have to pay my gas bill until next month, I'll be ordering the yarn along with a row counter, a set of #2 DPNs, and a hank of natural fingering yarn to dye myself, which I think will be exciting. I was so happy to see knitpicks was reasonable with shipping charges. I won't be using Elann because they wanted $10 shipping on 2 balls of yarn, yuck!

Plus I have to figure out what yarn I'll be using for the super secret christmas present for the boyfriend...the seamless willie warmer LMAO!! I'll have to learn a few more tricks for that one, too, but it doesn't look too complicated. I hope! I'm thinking either cotton or acrylic since I don't want to use 'good' yarn on something that won't be used.

He doesn't understand how I can have a ton of projects queued up that I want to work on. I think after Christmas I'll drag him back to the LYS, which is not quite local, and talk to the owner again and see how many she has queued up, or on needles. I know it's rather common for knitters to do this, so I'm not way outta my gourd. I'm just catching on rather quickly ;)

Knitting disaster

On advise from my psychiatrist about my lack of motivation to do just about anything, I've been doing 15 minutes of something that needs done when I physically feel up to it. Like the dishes (I have 1/3 done now!) and my knitting. I got another 10 rows done on my paw print cloth the other day. Just went to pick it up and noticed that somehow I'd gotten it backwards! I had to frog it all!!

Then when I got it all back on the needles, I realized I needed to frog another row. Well I said to heck with this! Frogged the whole thing :( I think I'm going to move onto my huge scarf since I'd like to have it done before winter hits and this is just for pretty. And the scarf is knitting only and in the round so hopefully I won't get that backwards *sighs* Plus my boy cat keeps trying to get up on my dresser to get the bag it's in to chew on. Stupid cat! Just when he's feeling better he wants to force himself to get sick again...I think he's secretly bulimic heh.

In other knitting news, I bought a hard pink pencil case at Walmart yesterday for under a buck to hold my instruments of knitting destruction (like my needles, stitch gauge, stitch markers, etc.) So now I have a pink case for my misc. stuff, pink cords and case on my Denise set, pink stripped yarn for 1/2 of the scarf, a pink knitting blog...I think I see a pattern here, don't you? :P

And my wonderful boyfriend has almost finished ripping out the small tree/shrub from in front of my house, where I plan to plant some naturally colored cotton in copper/brown. The flowers look beautiful, and hopefully I can find a spinner that'll show me how it's done and let me use their wheel haha. It won't be much but it'll be mine!

Freecycle!

So here it is, humid as usual, and I'm lusting over yarns and patterns when the thought pops in my head to check out my local Freecycle! I actually found a post from yesterday where a lady on the other side of my county is offering a free bag of misc. yarns. No idea what, or exactly how much, but hello free yarn! *fingers crossed*

So if you think you'd just find kids stuff, old exercise bikes and the likes there, think again! You never know what you'll find...or hey, you could even get rid of that ugly yarn you'll never use that you got as a well meaning gift and give it to a home where a new knitter or someone who's as dirt poor as me would really appreciate it!

Summer blues

It's not been a conductive time to work on my knitting lately. The heat and humidity have been playing hell on my Fibromyalgia. While the higher dose on my baclofen has been helping more with my pain, my concentration is shot, plus the humidity makes even thinking about using yarn a joke. Right now it's 7:45AM, already 70F with 88% humidity, and a high of 90F forecast...ugh!

Of course this isn't just affecting my pursuits of washcloth making. I also missed the last weekend of the RenFaire in Ohio. Woke up with a killer headache, plus severe nausea that didn't even go away with a surprise iced coffee from Mr. Concerned. Not even him offering to complete my outfit was enough to get me to go unfortunately. (Hopefully by next year I can sew us clothes!) And my sleep is also suffering. I always feel like I'm sticking to the sheets...if only I could afford to condition my air.

For now, until it cools off, I'm staring forlornly at my small skein of blue cotton yarn, and the one multicolored skein of surprisingly soft acrylic I got last week that I think will make a lovely simple scarf, although I should probably get a few more of the same lot. But the weather calls for it not getting under 80 until this weekend, with a lot of rain showers. Which will be good for Tim's tomatoes, but not soon enough for me!


Addendum: I didn't even realize it's been since the 8th that I started this blog. It only felt like a few days ago all this weather crud started...ahh the joys of brain fog.

The perils of beginning to knit

Long story short, I wanted to learn to knit thanks to the internet. Ah, it's such a wonderful tool sometimes.

For my birthday, my boyfriends mother bought me the Denise interchangeable needle set since regular length needles were hell on my hands, and I really wanted the pink cords. I was coveting those for all sorts of projects I want to do, so I'm very glad I got them, they work so beautifully. A few skeins of cheap yarn later, and I'm now working on my first 'real' project: a cotton washcloth with a puppy dog paw print found here. And that's where the perils being!

I think I've unraveled the sucker 3 times so far, and only gotten as far as the 8th row, because somehow I kept adding stitches accidentally. After much internal cursing, and throwing the boy cat off of my lap a few times, I have figured out the main reasons I'm adding stitches.

1) At the beginning of a row, I wasn't orienting my work properly. By forcing the yarn to the back of the needle, it looked like I was up one stitch. Now I know to tug it down to properly orient it. That one only took a TON of frustration to figure out!

2) This project is my first foray into purling. Very simple once I got the hang of it, but the first stitch between knit and purl was adding a stitch, and I didn't realize it until I'd count my stitches and find I was up to 40 from 36, ugh!

The problem ended up being that I actually had to move the yarn to the front of the work from the back. None of the video's I'd seen about purling had addressed this, so I may write into my favorite YouTube knitting / crafting channel (CyberSeams) and see if they'd do a quick vid about common mistakes us newbies make :) I would if I were more photogenic lmao

So hopefully over the next few days I'll finish that darn washcloth and move on to something a little larger.