Ye Olde Knitting Projects

So here I'd like to show you a few of my old knitting projects (mostly scarves). I've knit many-a-thing since Marsha first taught me to knit in August 2004. However, I can never remember to photograph things and then I give them away, undocumented for posterity! Which is why I am so glad to have started this blog! It will compel me to be more active with my camera. I'd say that I've given away probably 80% of the items I've knitted. These are the items I still have:

• My first piece of knitting ever: a scarf with Lamb's Pride Bulky, in prairie fire. I love the color and the look of this scarf. BUT it's super itchy. :-( This is just all garter stitch. Nothing fancy.

• Here's a scarf with Jo-Ann Sensations Willow, in green. This is a soft, touchable yarn. But it looks way better on the skein than it does in the finished product. And it was very difficult to work with, too. I would not recommend it. I get a lot of compliments on it, oddly enough. But if I had to do it over again, I'd make it a little wider.

• And now...the scarf. The supreme being of all scarves. I absolutely love this scarf. In fact, I bought a coat JUST to match this scarf. This is a loopy scarf with Patons Bohemian, in wandering wines. Or as my friend, Nicole, has superbly dubbed this yarn,"God's chest hair." Seriously, this yarn is unreal. The feel of it is incredible. So this was quite an ambitious thing for me to undertake at the time. I had only really knitted up about 5 things. I found the pattern on Joann.com's free patterns pages. Unfortunately, I don't think it's there anymore. It took me about an hour just to figure out how to make the loop stitches (and I didn't even have to purl anything...). After the epiphany, it wasn't hard to do. This yarn isn't the easiest to work with because it does NOT give at all. But the outcome is well worth it!

• And, yes, another scarf. This one is more recent. It was when I was discovering the joys of lacy knitting. I am a big fan of k2tog, yo. Haha. For this scarf I used Noro Hana silk yarn in a deep eggplant color. I got this yarn on clearance from purlsoho.com. This is more of a decorative piece, not something for warmth, obviously. I found a scarf pattern in a mini knitting book in Target's dollar-bins. The scarf in the pattern was just one column of the lace. I reworked the pattern to make it 2 columns.

• Lastly, this is the only hat that I made that I kept for myself. And, yes, I DO wear it, thank you very much! I did this hat on circular needles using Lion Brand Colorwaves, Pebble Beach. This is really nice yarn to work with, very forgiving. I made the tassles myself, and they were apparently a little loose. So they frayed really quickly. But it's still kind of cute!

Now the great litany of items that I knitted (or I remember that I knitted!) and gave away:
5 hats
9 scarves
3 wraps/shawls
4 baby sweaters
5 baby blankets
1 baby bib
1 cage blanket for a homeless pet

Then there are those poor souls that have fallen out of favor with their fickle creator---sad, abandoned projects, like the poncho of trendiness and doom. I started it in the midst of the great poncho rebirth of 2004. I got kind of tired of working on it, then never finished it. And now, puh-lease. Who wears them? It's now sitting in the deep recesses of some forgotten knitting bag somewhere in my house...silently plotting its revenge on me.

Coming soon: current projects, cool knitting websites!