Knitting (Ahem) Progress Report

As busy as I am these days, I still find myself, at the Country Casa with spare time on my hands. There are those of you that would tell me to just relax, and I DO relax, but when the house is clean, laundry & dishes done by, say, 8:30 p.m., a girl that doesn't like staring at the television gets a little bored. My "extracurricular" belongings still reside at the Casa Ciudad, so grabbing a book or setting up the easel isn't always feasible.

I announced to Clint that I'd like to learn to knit. It's creative, compact, and requires no deadlines. Perfect!

That very day we wandered by a garage sale, and there, for $1, was an entire set of knitting needles. Clearly, the Knitting Gods were shining down on me.

I immediately set about whining and lamenting: needles, no knowledge. Wah! Luckily, friend & coworker Diana stepped up and agreed to get me started. We met at a coffee shop last Saturday, and I casted off my first stitch:

(There's Diana, in the yellow shoes.)

From there, I was advised that my metal needles were crap (admittedly, the tips were bent on the set I started with), and that most knitters prefer wooden needles. So I went straight to the knit shop for yarn and wooden needles.

At the knit shop, I was advised that most people prefer circular wooden needles, so I bought the circular needles.

After some practice that created a sizable wad of knit-nothing, I decided to start on a simple project, and also that I really did prefer straight needles. Back out I went, for size 10 needles, and some shiny new red yarn.

I'd set out to make knitted dish rags, which I love. Here's a photo of what I was trying to make:

Halfway through my project, everything was perfect. Then another knitting friend informed me that the dish rags are supposed to be made of cotton yarn. Uh...like the pattern indicated, and I ignored.

Also, a size 7 needle is preferable to get a tighter weave, so that the towel doesn't get all baggy when it's wet.

And then I tried to teach myself how to decrease the stitches, and I YO K1 instead of YO K2, and where the towel should have been getting smaller, it got bigger, but I kept on going until I figured out what I was doing wrong, and I by-God finished my dishrag!

Yayyyyyyyyyyyy! Isn't it beautiful? I'm well on my way to becoming a famous textile artist, I just know it! That it's a little crookedy, was knit with the wrong needles, and won't absorb a drop of water because it's made from acrylic yarn...

...doesn't bother the cat one bit.