A couple of months ago, I wrote a post about finishing my first-ever knitting project, a scarf.  I also mentioned in that post that I’ve also been working on a blanket, and that it was taking forever.  Well, it’s still taking forever.  But it’s because I put it aside to work on a Christmas gift for my good friend Heather, and since Christmas is over and the scarf has been finished and gifted, I can now share it with you all!

Just a tiny bit of background here…

Heather’s favorite color is purple.  It’s difficult to find such a color yarn.  But I did find it, on my favorite website for all things knitting: KnitPicks.com.  I have bought a ton of yarn on that website, and a whole set of Harmony Wood knitting needles, which are the best knitting needles ever, in my humble beginner’s opinion.  I found the pattern I used for the scarf on Knitting Fairy, where it was free!  The pattern was all knit stitches, except for every other row, where there was a yarn over and a K2tog thrown in (for my readers who are also knitters!).

Here’s the finished product, which I was very happy with and proud of.  I loved making this scarf so much that I have already purchased more yarn (green this time) to make another one, and a hat to hopefully go with it (I’ve never made a hat before, so we’ll have to see how that goes).

2 people like this post.

Unlike

© 2010, The Table Has Shoes (and Other Ambiguities). All rights reserved.

A couple of days ago, a rather momentous thing occurred in my life.

I finished knitting my first scarf.

YES that is a VERY momentous thing for me!!  I have been working on said scarf for nearly a year – it is the very first thing I have ever completed knitting.  I had another scarf that I was working on, but I decided it sucked and ripped it apart in a fit of pissiness one night many months ago.

Here is the finished scarf:

I bet you’re all wondering why it took me almost a YEAR to finish this scarf.  It has no embellishments, no fancy stitch work… there is no good reason at all for it to have taken me so long.  And you’re right.  It shouldn’t have taken so long.  At one point I became absolutely convinced this scarf was eating all the yarn I knit into it… I now concede that was probably not the case.  Here is the real reason excuse: I have also been working on a blanket.  SINCE FEBRUARY.  It’s still not done.

It’s so not done, in fact, that I had to lay all the strips out on my bed just so you can tell it’s supposed to be a blanket.  See, what happened was that I found this really nice yarn online, and it just so happened that one of the recommended patterns for that yarn was this blanket.  You knit the blanket in strips and then sew it together with a mattress stitch.  I’ll be honest… I have no idea, to this day, what mattress stitch is.  I have a fantastic book that I am quite confident will tell me how to do it if I ever finish knitting these strips – I learned most of what I know about knitting from this book.  The rest I learned from Tiffany, who is a much more accomplished knitter than I am.

The thing no one tells you about buying yarn online is that it’s really difficult to see how thick it really is. What I didn’t realize when I bought this stuff was that I would be knitting a whole blanket out of yarn that is thinner than a cell phone charger cord. That’s important information to have when you’re knitting. And it’s BAD NEWS when you’re knitting an entire blanket.  Hence the blanket not being finished yet.  Hence the scarf taking me a year to complete (well, that and the yarn-eating problem).

I will leave you with a couple more images of the incomplete blanket.  It’s taking forever, but I think it’s going to be really nice once it’s done.

Like

Unlike

© 2009, The Table Has Shoes (and Other Ambiguities). All rights reserved.