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.

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!