Knitting

My Grandmother taught me how to knit when I was young & somehow I never forgot how.

I really wouldn't say I'm good - I can do a regular or purl stitch and only into a rectangular shape; nothing fancy. My Grandma helped me start a project when I was less than 10 years old, that I thought was going to be a scarf for my dad, but I had little patience to stick it out. It got to be maybe a foot in length before I set it aside for something more interesting, and something that didn't hurt my fingers. 

Over the years, I would find the same ball of yarn with the needles stuck into it and tell myself that I should finish it. And I would sit and knit a few rows, maybe over several days, but my fingers would start hurting after a while and I'd put it away again.

I'd fit right into Gryffindor with these colors...

When I was 21, I moved into my first apartment (outside of college living) with my older sister and we decided to start our own "knitting club" to practice and see what we could do. 

It turned out we still weren't ambitious enough to learn anything fancy, but we practiced what we did know and I ended up making a blanket! (Not from the same ball of yarn my Grandma started for me, but it was the first knitting project I completed.) Of course there were things about the blanket that I could have done better; it ended up being a rather long and skinny blanket that I had to lay flat under and not move to stay covered. Nonetheless, I was quite pleased with myself for having finally finished something.

Knitting something big enough to cover an entire body takes a long time (just in case you didn't know). I thought of an idea to try knitting single squares and then stitch them together to create a knit quilt-like blanket. That way I could spend 20 minutes knitting a square that would be part of a large project, but still feel like I'd finished something.

I then found the same idea on pinterest and realized I wasn't the first person to come up with it.

Today, I'm even more impressed with myself for creating this scarf. Can't you tell by the look on my face?

I got the idea from all those infinity scarves lately. A friend of mine had knitted herself one last winter, so I thought I'd try. Mine's definitely a 'finite' scarf though; my boyfriend compared it to a dickie... I guess it is, kind of.
I started by casting on 44 stitches with the intent of only knitting til it was about 8 inches, then casting off and sewing the two shorter sides together - creating a scarf that I would just pull over my head. But 44 stitches wasn't going to make it around my neck without really stretching it. So I decided to add 12 stitches to each end to make it wider; and then I had the smaller part to fold over the top. That made it a little bit wider than I need, but it will still keep me warm.
Since "chevron" is a thing lately, I decided to try knitting in a zig-zag and I think it turned out pretty nice.