LYS gone!

So I went to the nearest LYS to my house today and lo and behold it was their last day of business!  Huge bummer because now to get fancy yarns I can't find at Michael's, i'll have to go all the way to the richer side of town.  A nice enough place, but I don't always feel like I fit in over there.  Plus, I really liked the LYS closer to home, it was quainter and had super-friendly southern people working there.  I was hoping to start taking a knitting class there as well.  Guess not anymore, but that's okay because I bought some more books to help me with the stitches I can't figure out.  One was "Teach Yourself Visually Knitting" which has photographs and detailed instructions for every different method of increasing and decreasing...yay!!  Also, the yarn was on sale for 70% off so I bought a ridiculous amount!  I'm planning on knitting a vest from some NY red, green, and yellow Fiesta yarn and a couple of pairs of mittens with Scenic yarn pink and orange as well as lots of dishcloths of varying colors from some beautiful Sugar N' Cream yarn.  I had a great time shopping beyond what I can currently afford, but of course you can always convince yourself that it's okay because it was a Sale!!...oh well:-P  I went to Target afterwards to pick up some metal cubicles to finally make myself a yarn shelf (Pictured above)...yaya!! I've been wanting one ever since I started accumulating yarn like crazy.  

     Left is a picture of how I'm coming with the Skinny Tie, I think it's looking pretty good for its being my first attempt at striping! :-D  I've completed 6 out of 17 stripes so far...it feels good to be completing projects again.

I'm home!

So, I'm now back from Tanzania and am once again ready to get knitting.  I did do some knitting while overseas, but it was a shawl of my own design and is not even worthy to be displayed in a photo it turned out so badly :-(  It was intended for my host Mama.  I will make her another shawl though, following a pattern, and send it to her by mail.  Hopefully it'll get there!  Mail when it comes to packages is super iffy between Tanzania and the US.  Another issue with knitting in Tanzania was the utter lack of yarn stores!  I knew of one, but it was so out of the way that I never got to check it out and from what I could tell by the different yarns that my host Mama bought, they were just one color very simple acrylics.  Nothing fancy at all.  So it is nice and dangerous money-wise to be back in the world of beautiful yarn!!  Something I fell prey to a couple days ago when I went to Michael's and purchased 3 skeins of Patons Rumor in Moonstone Heather (pictured right), an incredibly 80's looking pattern a.k.a. super cute and colorful!  I'm planning on making the Barbi cropped sweater from Heather Dixon's Not Your Mama's Knitting - the gauge worked out perfectly!! Excitement :-P  The only problem with this pattern is that I'm having serious issues on the whole knitting into the front and then back of the stitch or kfb thing, which is why I'm heading over to the local yarn store tomorrow to figure it all out.  Also, as I have just returned from this semi-hiatus from knitting I have jumped into the world of way too many UFOs.  I'm still working on that goat for my little bro (I have what is completed of it so far pictured below) and I just started a skinny tie (from a kit my mom got me for Christmas some time ago) with thick green stripes and thin blue stripes (super cute colors) and I'm still working on my green and blue blanket of various swatches for GTU (although this project is also a learning process in stitch patterns).  Also, I unraveled the scarf for my dad cuz it was just way too girly looking and I don't think he even wears scarves anyway (I'm gonna have to rethink the whole making my dad something thing).  With the yarn I was going to use to make his scarf, I'm planning on knitting the Cable Access purse also from HD's NYM's Kntg, although I'm having issues there too, once again reason for my venture to the yarn store tomorrow.  I hope all this confusion works itself out and I can start knitting away again on all kinds of new projects.  I do still have the simple project of my cross necklace to begin (amazing bamboo yarn is involved!).  So current actually begun projects = 4 and Soon to begin projects = 2.  I better finish one soon so I'm not too overloaded :-P (That goats been around for awhile!) 

p.s. Tanzania is an amazing country!!

I forgot to show off the Moose pin :-P

My Mom's Two Gifts

I had this sorta-tacky red, green, and white with silver metallic Christmas yarn

and wasn't so sure what to do with it, so I decided Christmas coasters for my Mom might be the best idea.   I have so much yarn left over, I should start thinking on what else to make from it (maybe Christmas placemats?), since the coasters did turn out well and my Mom liked them :-P  These pictures don't really show the metallic bits in the yarn very well, but they are pretty obvious on the coasters, kinda neat.    

         

 She then wanted a scarf so I took her to Michael's to pick out a yarn she liked.  The first one she chose was way funky and thin and would only make a good summery-type scarf (and I don't even know if I'm ready to work with that type of crazy yarn yet) so I made her keep looking and she ended up finding this amazing Lion Brand Homespun yarn

that is super soft and warm and thick.  Also, it is a beautiful blue, her favorite color, with some nice greens mixed in.  The scarf ended up looking ridged because I doubled up the yarn following a pattern on the back of the yarn label itself.  She wears it a lot too which is definitely rewarding :-)

The Beginning of Knitty Love

Hello, this is my first post and I'm very excited about starting a knitting blog.  I actually only learned how to knit last month, but surprise! I'm now an avid knitter.  :-D

So, I wanted to go ahead and post my second FO ever which is the Three-Way Tassel Hat from Knitting for Dummies.  My biggest modification was in the cuff where I just let the backwards stockinette stitch roll up instead of trying to tame it straight and flip it up.  This resulted in a rolled up cuff displaying garter stitch and it works great by being quite easy to pull over my ears.  I used 2 skeins of Patons SWS (Soy Wool Stripes) in Natural Blue.  This yarn was really frustrating at first but I have since realized that that's just because the first few rows are always frustrating.  The finished product is super soft

and adorable.  I can wear it as either a double-pointed hat or as a dog-eared hat.  I prefer dog-eared, but I'm

sure a child would love keeping this hat double-pointed.  It's such a fun item. 

 

The picture uploading is going much slower than I thought it would, so I think I'll have to wait until tomorrow to post a close-up of the adorable brown moose pin!

Thanks for listening and happy knitting!

p.s. I'll be posting my other so-far FOs within the week.