I won my first knitting blog contest!!

Hello,
I'm so excited about having won my first knitting blog contest!! It was from Jane at quiddity.typepad.com whose blog you should definitely check out :-) The prize was some beautiful purple/blue 100% baby alpaca yarn - so soft - I can't wait to start knitting the pattern she sent along with it - the Indiecita Baby Alpaca Scarf. It should be a lovely knit - the pattern looks really pretty - and I haven't really done much pattern work yet (meaning stitches besides just purling straight, knitting straight, increasing, and decreasing) so I'm really excited!! I also received a lovely notebook with an adorable sheep on the cover and a fridge list magnet with the same motif. :-D Thanks Jane!!
I have a lot of updating to do, but will have to wait until tomorrow to do so, I also have several pics to post :-) I will say that I have completed all the pieces for the goat except for one horn!! Yay- now just a lot of seaming :-P
p.s. My days have been crazy since I've been getting up at 5am every morning to go out and do field work tromping around in the woods :-P

I BROKE A NEEDLE :-(

I've been using the pretty plastic colored needles - forgot the brand name, and one of them just broke!!! Thankfully I have another set of 9s with me, but I don't have a duplicate of every size needle :-( Better be more careful next time!! Ahhhhhhhhh!!

Plans for the next few days :-D

     Since I have finished my super cute shrug with the amazing Patons Rumor yarn, I would like to continue knitting with Patons Rumor!  I'm planning on knitting the Waist Clincher from Dixon's Not Your Mama's Knitting and the Picot-Edge Gauntlets from Knit.101 with this same yarn because I ended up having so much left over, although I might still have to buy one more skein, not a big deal - I probably currently have about 120+ yards left and the two patterns require <50 and <160.    
I'm also back on the goat train, trying to finish it up so when I go down to visit my bro I can give it to him.  It's actually more fun :-D  than I remember to knit with the particular yarn I'm using, update later on what it is, I don't have the label with me.    
I haven't worked on the tie in awhile.  I'll get started again eventually :-/.

It's funny how much of a high finishing a project that looks good really is :-P

SO CUTE!!!

Updates coming on my next plans :-)

Finished with shrug :-D

I finished the cap-sleeved shrug (Barbi) from Dixon's Not Your Mama's Knitting. I used Patons Rumor in Moonstone Heather and it turned out so cute!! It's so cool that I chose a yarn I liked much better than that in the pattern and intuitively knew to knit it on a size smaller needle than the pattern asked for, resulting in a perfect guage - yes I did do a swatch. I'm super excited because I loved the process of knitting this pattern and it turned out so quickly, it's actually only 36 rows. I was afraid it wouldn't fit, but it in fact fits quite nicely. I will be posting a photo before the days up :-) Of course there are the few beginnner's errors, but for my first "sweater," I think it's pretty darn good. Also, the needle lenght thing ended up not being a problem, It's incredible how many stitches you can comfortably fit on a regular length needle - this was up to 121. I'm super excited about starting a new project now - I have no idea what I'm going to do, but I do need to get back to finishing up my brother's goat :-)
Also, I'm back at school for the summer to start working on my Pileated Woodpecker research and I'm quite excited about having the evenings for knitting and reading :-)

Needles

I need longer needles!! My current project is growing as I add new loops (on purpose) to every other row and I'm running out of needle space...oh no!! Hopefully it'll all fit on the regular length needles I'm currently using, if not I guess I'll just have to wait until I can find some long ones. I didn't realize how invaluable longer needles really are...oh well :-P Just felt like expressing my laughable beginner woes :-)

I'm Back :-D

So, I finally realized that it wasn't just my being sick for the past 3 weeks (I've been well for 1 now...yay!) that caused my decrease in knitting activity, but that I was bored with the project I was working on - the green and blue tie - probably because there was nothing new and interesting about it...no cool new stitches or techniques to learn (although it is my first attempt at striping - not the most fun technique to me).  Well, I started over on the Barbi cap-sleeved shrug from Heather Dixon's Not Your Mama's Knitting and looked at four different books to figure out how to do the kfb or knit front and back or bar increase or increase in an existing stich (the reason why I had stopped this project originally)...why does this stitch have so many friggin' names?!?  It was so rewarding when I finally figured out how to do the stitch and to find that it is such an easy stitch! - great instructions found in Jennifer Worick's Getting Started Knitting!  I love the Patons Rumor yarn that I'm using it's so soft and has such fun colors - I can't wait to see the end result, but the actual knitting process is a lot of fun at this point as well since I'm practicing some new stitches/techniques now :-D  Here's a little pic of me happily holding the beginnings of my first "sweater."  Yay for new-found knitting happiness :-P

  

Ravelry

Hello, I haven't posted in a week because I've been feeling a little under the weather and haven't really been knitting much. But, I would like to update the fact that I'm now on Ravelry! My username is KnittyKittyLove. I'm so excited about having a place to enter my stash and search for projects other people have done using that yarn!! Should be fun - now I'm just trying to find time to do exactly that :-) Hopefully I'll have a knitting update soon! Oh and Happy Mother's Day - bad KnittyKitty for not making anything for your Mom :-P