First day of Spring…or?

I feel silly after my last post commenting about the change in weather. It’s pouring down rain and I have the heater on. And it is supposed to be the vernal equinox. hah. I guess this is the “April” showers we need for flowers? Too bad it’s not April yet!

I’m enjoying the rainy Sunday knitting of course! I’ve finished the thumb on my first glove…moving on to the fingers! I’m also grateful for an ABC family Harry Potter marathon—did I mention I’m a nerd?? It makes for a very relaxing evening.

This past week has been intense—I’ve actually been teaching in my classroom! I LOVE it!!! But trust me, it is so much harder than it looks, even doing something as simple as reading a chapter to the class. You would be amazed as to how many other things you are doing and thinking at the same time. It’s a bit overwhelming, but my master teacher is really great and supportive. I am learning so much from her.

I realized that I didn’t mention this in my last post, but I wanted to comment on the tragedy in Japan. It is heartbreaking to think about. I have many friends that live there but thankfully they are all okay and so are their families.

Sigh No More

I have recently become obsessed with the band Mumford and Sons. There is just something about the haunting lyrics and “rock folk” (whatever that means) sound. I also don’t mind that they are inspired by literature like Shakespeare and Steinbeck (did I mention I was an English major?) Anyway, I’ve been listening to them non-stop for the past few days. <3

I also celebrated my birthday last weekend. It was a great day with family and friends (even my best friend was able to fly in from out of state!) She was actually here for family reasons, and not the good kind :( but if there can be a silver lining to the cloud then it is that we got to spend time together. I received some cash which hopefully means more yarn for me :) Not that I need anymore! A highlight gift for me was Seasons 1 & 2 (the first half) of Glee. Let the nerd points increase.

Anyway, I finished my gloves!! That was a proud moment for me. But even as I was celebrating my accomplishment, I was wanting to rip them apart and start over. They aren’t bad, but I just wanted to make them better, you know? My sister was happy to receive them (although she may have just been being nice).

with the mitten flap on:

mitten flap down:

Even though I’m not 100% satisfied with them (especially with the fingers), I think they look really good for my first attempt.

What’s on my hooks and needles?
Well, I broke my new years resolution and started a new project. Sigh. So hard not too! I’m making another pair of gloves, from the same book as the last ones, but they don’t have a mitten flap, just regular fingers. Here’s what I have so far, taken with my camera phone, so the quality’s not too great, but you get the idea.

The weather is finally warming up (I love summer) which means my current project probably won’t get used till next season, haha. But It also means I can spend time outside knitting which is my favorite :) especially with a glass of iced peach tea.

What’s your favorite environment to knit or crochet in?

There’s a little flame inside every soul

What’s new…

I have completed three weeks of my teaching program although honestly it feels like it has been three months. But I absolutely love it. I am a self proclaimed nerd, but I am in the company of friends right now :) The English majors joke about prepositions and Shakespeare and in my mixed classes we share stories about all the crazy things that kids try to get away with these days. And then we talk about planning lessons  and our brains go crazy in another realm that totally makes sense to us. It’s great—I feel like I belong :) In even better news, I got my placement for student teaching! I was a little late in getting placed (took an extra week), but I really love my classes (7th grade) and my master teacher—I am going to learn a TON from her. I guess I should add a quick note because in my previous post I said I wanted to teach high school and now I’m teaching junior high. It’s a funny chain of events, but something I think God always had planned for me and now I’m actually looking forward to the change :)

On my hooks and needles…

I haven’t started any new projects, probably mostly cause I’m so busy with school. But I have looked at a lot of patterns and salivated over yarn and fantasized about what I’m making “next.” I have another pregnant friend due this summer so I may be making another baby blanket. I’ve always wanted to tackle a sweater- and I have several patterns in mind. But one of the most popular resolutions for most yarn crafters is of course don’t start any new projects until the old ones are done. It’s not practical, but we all try to do that! So far I’ve stayed true, but we’ll see…

What’s off?

My baby blanket! It turned out so cute!!

They don’t know what they are having yet, but I think the green and yellow are a great color combination and the mom-to-be loved it :)

I had to pull an all-nighter to finish it! Usually that’s reserved for school projects, such as my papers haha. Any English major who tells you they don’t write their papers the night before they are due is lying. We all write them the night before and that’s usually when they are the best. Now I’m going to go into teaching and teach my students to have rough drafts and timelines but in reality, nobody does that ;)

That’s all for now! I guess it will be a good goal for me to update once a month. No I think a better goal will be twice a month, but realistically I think it will be closer to one. I just like to give myself high expectations :)

p.s. blog title comes from a song by Addison Road: “This Little Light of Mine”

It’s a new year so here’s a new post!

Well I’m not a product of my generation- I don’t blog on a daily basis! I would like to say that my new years resolutions is to blog more but as it’s 22 days into the new year, I don’t think I’m going to be doing that much either! Since no one follows me yet though, I think that’s okay :)

A quick update on my personal life…I’ll be starting school on Monday. I’ve already graduated from college but I’m heading back to earn my teaching credentials. And because everyone always asks, age level: high school. Subject: English (literature OR grammar- whatever I can get a job doing!) This means one of two things for my blog posting. Either I will be way too busy writing lesson plans that I will stop blogging…or I will be on a regular schedule and will somehow find a time to blog. I’d like to say the latter but may be the former :/

Now for the yarn update…what’s on my hooks and needles? :) Well I always have several projects going on, but I do have two current ones that I’m working on and trying to finish.

Knitting: I’m making my first pair of gloves! I went kind of ambitious but it’s been really fun :) The pattern I’m following is from this book: Knitters Bible Knitted Accessories. I’m making the gloves on the cover except I’m using a variegated Red Heart yarn (Earth & Sky) and they are turning out really cute. Once I’m done I’ll mail them to my sister living in Oregon :)

Crochet: I’m working on a baby blanket for a friend due in March. I got the pattern from a friend and I don’t know where she got it from so I can’t link to it :( But basically it is striped and wavy. I know, lame description, but once I’m done I’ll post a picture.

As for what’s OFF my hooks and needles? (what I’ve completed)

Well with the holidays, I made several Christmas presents.

For the boyfriend, I made an afghan replicating the flag of South Africa (he has done mission work there)

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This was the blanket that I was working on without a pattern :) It took FOREVER but I’m really satisfied with it and he liked it so that’s good :) As I said before, I followed a graph that I made from knitpro.com. I did about 4 stitches per block (to make the size I wanted…I can’t say that that is rule to follow). Then I made a simple border of single crochet to finish it off.

For my parents, I made a wine bottle cover. I found the pattern on http://www.michaels.com/ but it seems to have been removed from the site. :(
The yarn I used is called Patons, Classic Wool (Rosewood). Here’s what it looked like:
(in process…blocking)

and complete!

Well that’s all that’s going on in this yarn lovers life…hope to update soon!

Learning Lessons

I’m a firm believer that every crochet project is an opportunity to learn something new. So I’m going to start this blog with the lessons I have learned so far while working on this project.

Lesson #1: Yarn is forgiving. VERY forgiving. Let it forgive you.
Lesson #2: It is okay to start over.
Lesson #3: Plan ahead.

This all started when my friend requested a specific image for a blanket. I scoured the internet for a pattern but alas there was none in existence. So I decided to make my own (this is the point that most people would say, turn back!) I went to an awesome website called knitpro.com where I uploaded my image and they created a graph of a pattern for me. It was up to me to determine how many stitches per block. Talk about a headache! But I hate to say no to a challenge :)

As you can probably guess from my “lessons learned” my first few attempts weren’t so successful. At first, I thought I would complete each section of the afghan and piece it together. But that would mean I would be working with pieces that would be the entire length of the afghan and I was concerned that the chance for error was too great. So I decided to work it row by row which means I’m working with five yarns at one time. Which gives me another headache…or at least a lot of tangled yarn.

My first mistake was to plan out my afghan based on the first row and hope that it would all work out. It didn’t. I have had to rip out my yarn back to the beginning more than once. I’m not kidding about yarn being forgiving. However, I think and I’m mostly confident that I’m finally on the right track. As of right now I’ve completed eight rows of 128. Maybe that doesn’t sound like much, but a tip I learned from LionBrand podcast, Yarncraft is how to plan out your project so that you can complete on time. I have eleven weeks to complete my project. That means I need to finish 11.6 rows a week. Round that up 12, I need to do two rows per day with a one day of grace. So at this rate, I’ll probably finish my project early :)

wee!

I've been wanting to start a blog like this for a really long time and I'm finally doing it! What is the point? Well, it's a bit nerdy, but I LOVE to yarncraft. I started crocheting when I was kid (not sure what age, but young!) and knitting just a few years ago. I like to make just about anything- scarves, blankets, hats, amigurumi, potholders, purses, etc.

My goal with this blog is to share my current projects- the ups and the downs of them and everything in between. It's a fun (and sometimes frustrating) process to go from a ball of yarn to a completed object and I hope I can show what that looks like.

I'll use my next blog to describe/explain my current project. I'll give a bit of a teaser :) I'm working on an afghan but I'm not really sure what I got myself into. I've made blankets before but this is the first time I'm designing the entire thing. Yes, that's right, I am designing it. I'll give more details next time I post!