My knitting journey

I finally learned how to knit! I am so excited that I finally learned. I tried learning a few years back but gave up. I attempted to learn from a kit but that didn't really work out very well. I have always been fascinated watching ladies knit at lighting speeds. There is just something so calming and relaxing about it that drew me in. Also, as you know, I love to read. I always tend to "read by author". I find an author that I like and read all of their books. Once I finish those....I move on to another author. A few years back a ran across Maggie Sefton's books. She writes murder mysteries that are light-hearted and have a knitting theme that runs through the series. The main character, Kelly, learns to knit throughout the series and helps solve mursers. After reading these books I decided to give it another go. This time I had Maria, one of my adopted sisters, teach me. Amazing how easy it was to learn when someone actually showed me in person. She taught me how to do a knit stitch and a purl stitch. After that I found a few patterns online and played around. There are also patterns at the end of each of the books that I think I may be trying in the following months.

I started learning on #11 needles. This is one of my samples that I was trying to learn on. I like the look of the purl stitch so I thought that I would try and do a scarf with that pattern. Big mistake! That was one of my first lessons....purling tends to curl. Wish it didn't, but it does. Oh, in case you don't know what purling is...it's the stitch that looks like a braid.

This scarf was from a kit that I bought several years back. I forgot that I had it. Maria actually knitted the first 5 inches of it when I first had the kit. I decided to finish the scarf before trying another scarf. I figured the fuzziness of it would hide my mistakes.

Hannah really loves lime green and liked the scarf so I gave it to her for Christmas.

Here is a scarf that I started knitting for Adam. It's on #6 needles. I actually did about 14 inches or so but decided to scrap it and start over again. I messed up on the tension so it wasn't straight enough for my liking. I'll eventually finish his scarf.

While I was making Hannah's scarf, Emeline kept hinting that I could make her a scarf too. =) So...I started playing around and made this scarf for her. I tried figuring out how to make a slit in it so that I could pull the ends through. It was actually kind of big and I offered to make her a normal scarf that was more her size but she really wanted to keep this one.

SO....as I was making Emeline's scarf GEORGE decided that he wanted one too. This is after a few tug-of-wars with it. It was really cute. I was working on it during the show and trying to work on it between numbers. Every once in a while I would be sitting and grabbing a drink or catching my breath and I would have George come over to me. He would tap my leg and say," Vikki, work on my scarf." SO CUTE!

After making those scarves and while working on Adam's scarf, I decided to try my ginormous needles. These are the ones that are in the top picture of this post. I knew that I would be able to make the scarves faster because of the size of the needles and I needed a sense of accomplishment. Adam's scarf was taking me forever and I wanted to finish a scarf again before Christmas. Here is the first one that I made. Of course, as per the pattern, Jessie saw the scarf I was working on and loved the colors so.....I gave it to her.

I decided to try it on the night before I gave it to her. I decided that I should go ahead and make Mara a scarf too, seeing as I had already made 4 scarves for her family.

This is at Grandma and Grandpa's house on Christmas Eve. Hannah didn't wear her scarf so she's missing in this scarf picture.

Maria's scarf

Kristina's scarf. I also made a scarf for Diana and mailed it out with her Christmas gifts. She chose the same colors that Mara chose. The final tally for Christmas scarves was 8 this year.

I finally had a chance to make myself a scarf. I finished this one on New Year's Eve around 11:30 PM. The next thing that I want to learn is how to use the circular needles. There is a pattern in the back of one of the mysteries that doesn't sound too difficult that I may try. I have a feeling that it will take me quite some time seeing as it uses so many skeins. I'll post updates after I can track down some worsted wool yarn.