What's on my Needles?

I started knitting last summer in Keystone after a 20 year hiatus, and have thoroughly enjoyed making gifts for friends and family over the past year.

In June I finally finished a baby blanket for my cousin Josh and wife Brie's new baby boy, Benjamin Shoemaker.  I'd been working on it through the winter but didn't quite finish before his birth date in May.  These aren't exactly "baby" colors, but they're colors that I enjoy working with.  I liked the mock cable look and used a machine washable acrylic yarn for practicality.  Another of my cousins had a baby boy in August, but I haven't managed to make a blanket for him yet. 

 

In between working on Benjamin's blanket, I whipped up a scarf for my friend Maureen's birthday.  It is modeled here by her husband, Dave Jilk, demonstrating an unexpected flair for the true spirit of fashion. 

Since we were going to be in Alaska for the entire month of July, I thought I might finally make something for myself.  I ordered my favorite yarn, Misti Alpaca Chunky in Urban Autumn, online and started making a blanket for myself.  I used the same baby blanket pattern as the Rollie Cohen baby blanket from fall 2009. 

I got about 5 inches into it and realized it was going to weigh approximately 117 pounds before it was done and would smother me if I fell asleep under it while watching television.  I wasn't trying to replicate the feeling of the lead protective covering you wear during dental x-rays.

So I pulled it out.

I thought I'd go back to what I know best, and made a scarf instead. 

I used a simple moss stitch and things progressed nicely.

Here it is wet-blocked with the stitches stretched out:

Then I took a week-long daily Forrest Yoga class and gave the completed scarf to the teacher as a thank you gift.

So I still haven't made anything for myself.

I thought I might get brave and try some socks, and bought some fun yarn, but then I decided I wasn't brave enough to attempt that without being able to get human help.

I started another scarf project with an interesting loopy-looking pattern:

But I got bored with the simple 4-row repeat and pulled it out.

Then July was over and it was time to come home to Boulder.

So I'm trying again to make something for myself.  I'm using a yarn that I bought to make hats, but I haven't managed to move from two dimensions into three.  It turns out the amount of yarn wasn't really long enough to actually make a scarf, so I browsed some at my superb local yarn store,  Shuttles, Spindles, and Skeins to find a complementary yarn.  I found a Donegal tweed green with a purple fleck I think will make a very nice striped scarf for myself.  I'll experiment with how wide the bands of each yarn will be and we'll see if I can actually FINISH something without pulling it out!