stitch and glitch

It was my friend Rachel who inspired me to learn how to knit last winter. She bought the book Knitting for Dummies and taught herself how to make scarves hats and ponchos all by herself. I followed suit and picked up some needles and cheap yarn, but I opted for the Idiots Guide to Knitting and Crocheting instead. The purchase of this book would indicate that either (a) I'm an over achiever and thought it would be best to learn two difficult tasks from a book with shitty diagrams or (b) I'm some weird sort of bargain hunter with dreams of absorbing knowledge of two crafts for the price of one book. Either way it didn't really pay off and I ended up learning most things from Rachel and eventually purchasing the Dummies book anyways. I guess I have to work my way up to idiot level projects.

My first project was pretty easy and not from a book at all, but from the crafty mind of Rachel. I used large needles, two kinds of cheap yarn and stuck with just the knit stitch. It's pretty sloppy on the sides and has about 35 dropped stitches, but I finished it.
I like to call it the Grover scarf.


I wear it with pride even though sometimes I breathe in and choke on the blue bits of the fuzzy yarn that fly off into my mouth. When people ask me where I got it I get right up in their face and shout out, "I MADE IT MYSELF!" I am so awesome.

Projects after the Grover scarf included samples of failed patterns and scarves for my nephew. As we all know, babies and toddlers do not like scarves, so these attempts at cute little scarves were really just practice projects masquerading as lame (but heartfelt and homemade) gifts.

Then I got all sorts of crazy and found the nerve to mix up knitting and purling and made this little number for Alex


This basket weave pattern took a long time because it involved a lot of counting. Sometimes I like to watch a movie while I knit, which doesn't mix with the counting and resulted in removing rows, starting over multiple times and one breakdown which involved tears. It's a shame that I picked such an itchy wool blend yarn, because now I will have to force Alex to wear something scratchy and uncomfortable this winter while I walk beside him and point at his scarf shouting out "I MADE THAT!"

and then I tried to make a baby hat. It saddens me to post this picture.


Everything was going pretty well until I realized that the hat fit my head. Although my head is absurdly small I'm pretty sure it's larger than a baby sized head. I also (as you can see) ran into some problems while stitching the sides and the top up, and I think everyone will agree that a hat with unintentional holes is never attractive. I have nothing to shout out about this hat except maybe I LOVE PINK!

As for the crocheting, I gave it the old college try on two separate occasions for 40 minutes each. It made me feel worse than looking at that baby hat. I vaguely remember learning how to crochet from my Gramma many years ago, but I only got as far as making one long string, which exactly how far I got this time. I never figured out how add a second row in order to actually make anything useful. When I was 12 and I realized that all I knew how to do was make this long stretchy chain of yarn I decided it needed a purpose. Clearly the best thing to do with it was to make a trip line tied between my bed and my sisters bed. It was successful on more than one occasion because I was able to find yarn which matched the floor. I am sorry that I used my half assed craft to injure and embarrass my sister.

After some careful thought last week I decided to put the crochet hooks away. Even though I now know I can still make a kick ass trip line I think it's best for everyone if I leave Alex out of it.