Diary of a Crazy Knitter:

With all this 'jacked back' downtime, it's been a requirement to live life in the slow lane. My personal slow lane has alot of knitting podcasts in it (something like 600-ish left to listen to!). I've finally climbed Mount Lime & Violet, waded through Lixie Knits It, and listened to a whole host of random podcasters. It's left me SO SO excited about knitting (not that I lost my mojo or anything - just kicked it up another notch) and eager to try new things.

I learned to knit on April 23rd of 2005, and I've never not knit since. Yeah, there has been a day here or there where I didn't pick up the sticks, but only due to other things - busy, sick, running around, whathaveyou. From that day in April of 2005 I was hooked though.

So, in light of having my 3rd year 'knit-iversary' coming up I'm ready to expand my skills and test my abilities and learn new challenges.

I'ma make me a sweater, folks!! You heard me say it, and now I'm accountable.

All this time of knitting, I haven't really tried anything *difficult* for my personal ability. I took an Entrelac class so now I can knit that. I took a sock class and I can do those too. Felted purses, scarves up the wazoo, potholders, washclothes, blahblahblah. None of that is challenging or difficult, but a fitted garment scares the bejeezus out of me, so I've never tried.

Between now and April 23rd of 2008 I'm going to get all my planning done, and this is where ravelry earns it's FREAKING AWESOME award.

I already own this batch 'o yarn, thanks to an old kpixie yarn purchase.



That's 490 total yards of pastel Aurora 8. Perfect for a particular wee-tiny 3 year old girly-girl in the family.

I then head on over to ravelry and look up the yarn. Cool - there are 609 projects to check out, but wait! Lookie here . . . I can narrow my search down to 1) just *finished* items and 2) just *child* patterns and 3) *knitted* only and 4) by color.

With the click of a mouse, my search is narrowed down to 4 items. A pinwheel blanket, a pinwheel sweater, a swing coat (at first glance, I think it's the "Girlfriend's Swing Coat" from Knit & Tonic) and a hat.

From there, I can do more research on the pinwheel sweater and the swing coat, or I can change my search and modify # 2 by looking for *baby* patterns or *pullover* patterns.

HOW AWESOME IS THAT??

For years, we (the collective knitter's we) have had to go through googling, blog posts, archived knitty.com and magknits, all our saved up issues of Interweave & Vogue etc. and all our pattern books. Well, we can still do that (it's loads of fun and you remember shiat you forgot you wanted to knit, and then you promptly forget it again, lol), but ravelry is an awesome jumping off point to research and search in general.

I have roughly 4 months to plan this anniversary project and it's going to be so much fun! I'm scared kinda, but I know I can do it.

Being knee-deep in Christmas gift knitting has given me a bad case of the 'I wanna knit for ME now'-itis.

After Christmas, I'm going to get back into my sock knitting and challenge myself with more complex patterns. Hell, anything outside of straight stockinette and a basic heel-flap will be challenging!! I'm not a fan of the Monkey socks or those Potomuseswhateverthehelltheyrecalled ones. I know. If I could find my Knitting Membership card I'd turn it over, but I really don't *get* them. They just aren't attractive to me. There's a cute cables sock/booty pattern in LMKG that may be my December 26th project, or maybe the Embossed Leaves from Interweave Knits 2005. Something more challenging for sure, though.

**I'll post pics tomorrow, of Hunter, Blue and the finished Soap Sock for Jollyewe's viewing pleasure. Yep, I said it. TOMORROW!!**