Pics Or It Didn't Happen: I Make Stuff

I've been knitting a lot, lately (as you may have noticed). I'm enjoying this, because I've leveled up my Skill of Understanding about how certain things work, and why. I'm still not very good at following patterns; I start off just fine, and then I completely lose it somewhere in the middle and do whatever I feel like doing, until I'm done. This is due in large part to my inability to keep track of where I am and what I've completed, in said pattern.

I'm working on that.

My knitting bender began with CK's Christmas gift, which I started (with much self-congratulation) early enough to complete in time for Christmas. And then I actually completed it in time for Christmas. Whoa. (I still almost can't believe that I stuck with it and met my self-imposed deadline!) I chose to knit it on needles which were smaller than recommended, and that worked out well for the scarf; poorly for my hands. This was slow-going, and painful; I could get four or five rows done and then need to stop for days. I spent those couple of months sporting pain patches and ace bandages on my hands during this project, and people acted like I was joking when I said it was a knitting injury. No, really. It was.

Anyway, I really for-real-this-time followed a pattern, though, and here's the finished product:

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Then I made a softer, one-cable version for Tracy, but I don't have any photos of it, and I don't remember what the yarn was. It was soft and pretty and purple, though, and I liked how it turned out. Hey, Tracy, take a good photo or two, wouldja?

Next came Brenna's panda hat, which was a baby shower gift for Meg and Travis. This is the kind of knitting I do most often - make it up as I go along, and hope for the best. Tim pointed out the cuteness of making a panda hat out of bamboo yarn... which was entirely unintentional because I'm not that witty: I just liked the softness. I thought it was pretty funny when I saw Meg tell someone on Facebook that Brenna gets her ears from me. Hee!

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Photo by Travis (used with permission)

Around the same time, we learned that CK was going to be a daddy, and then in February we learned that the baby is a boy, so I chose a socially-dictated gender-specific colorway and embarked upon my first ever baby blanket project - another success at pattern-following.

As of this writing, the blanket is drying on Meredith's bedroom floor, after last night's wet blocking. I'll add some photos of the finished project "soon"... here's one from last week's "in progress" shot for Ravelry:

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And last but definitely not least, Merry's Little Mitts. She wanted mittens, I want to learn mittens (thus, these were my first attempt at mittenyness), and then when she tried the first one on halfway in (thank you, Magic Loop), she decided she wanted them fingerless. She's quite pleased with the result:

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