Wednesday, February 27, 2008

stash busting in progress

Never one to finish a project before starting a new one, I crocheted half of a basket tonight according to the pattern by Chickpea Sewing Studio, in some Peaches & Creme yarn I have had lying around for like a couple years. The skein ran out and I haven't started adding a new one, so the basket is not as tall as it will finally be. I was sort of hoping it would come out with a larger diameter, so that I could keep my mittens and scarf and hat in there when I get to my office every day. Hmm, must think of another pile of junk that needs containing...
In other news, here's some of my knitting progress! This is from a skein of Cascade yarn that I partially used for a pillow front for my mom, but the yarn is gorgeous and I've always wanted to use the rest of it for something nice. So now it's being transformed into a scarf! Sungyon is helping me to knit some of it, and we've definitely made some progress... at least, it looks like one end of a scarf. I'll probably need to find another skein of yarn pretty soon though.

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

New Skillz

I'm learning to knit! My parents gave me two sets of knitting needles for my birthday, sizes 8 and 10.5, and Sungyon taught me some of the basics (knit and purl, at least). With a little extra online tutorial-watching, I figured out how to cast on and bind off, so now I'm fully equipped to make rectangles! Here's my first test swatch, in Peaches & Creme cotton yarn:

I basically tried out a stitch pattern to see how it would come out, and I think I'm getting the hang of these stitches. It's hard coming from crochet, where I know exactly how each stitch will look and how to create what I want to make, whereas knitting is still very mysterious to me - I don't know how the yarn will behave! I see all these gorgeous patterns and objects on ravelry and knitty, but I have no idea how they came from these two skinny chopsticks! Well, I guess I'm one step closer to figuring that out. Next project: semi-ribbed scarf in gorgeous seafoam-green yarn that's been sitting in my yarn pile for a year!