Socks are my nemesis, hats are my true love.

Sock knitting is the craze in the knitting world now. Every knitter out there does it, blogs about and post pictures of them wearing their newly created sock in some beautiful location. You see big separate sections in the yarn store, solely devoted for sock yarn. Yes, it is indeed the fad of the knitting world and I have yet to fall in love with knitting socks.

When I completed my first scarf, I naturally wanted to do more. Not only did this provide me with a reason to go shopping for more yarn but it was the next great project. I wanted to make something nice and special for my husband, just for him. He said socks. A nice pair of dress socks for work, he said. So I rushed out to find the perfect needles, sock yarn and settled in learning how to knit socks. After starting, then undoing, then starting over, then undoing again (repeat 10 more times), I finally sought out some help. Carey had gotten the sock bug and just took to it. She's knitted several beautiful pairs of socks and has blogged (gotaspinningwheel.blogspot.com) about it with lovely photos of her creations in different locations. She helped me get started and once again I found myself in the start, undo, start over, undo pattern again. Maybe it was the yarn or the needles, I decided to buy more different types of sock yarn and needles. Again, start, undo....well you know the rest. By the third round of trying to knit a pair of socks for James it was getting close to winter and I said to myself "Bailey needs a hat". So I knitted a hat. Then another hat and another hat. My child only has one head but 4 hats to pick from now, with more on the way. Then I made a hat for Carey, one for my mother, one for Carey's mom and then another hat Carey. I found my knitting bug and although it's not the fad of the knitting world right now, I really enjoy making hats. They are just plain fun to make and although I have gone on to making other knitted items for people, I keep coming back to making hats. I did make something special for James earlier this year, I completed "The Boy Hat" pattern by Elizabeth Heath-Heckman just in time for winter that he wears all the time and now he has at least one handmade item from me.

So it's been 2 1/2 years since I learned to knit and I'm still working on a pair of socks for James. I recently came across a small pair of circular needles just for sock making and I'm at it again. I'm keeping the sock-in-progress located in the car in order to actually work on it once in a while (yes, James I know that's a cup holder but it also works for holding your sock-in-progress as well) on my daily carpooling to work.
No more excuses, I will finish the socks, although I did see a need for my dad to have a warm hat to wear outside now that it's winter.

Current projects

Here is my attempt to start up a blog on my adventures in knitting and spinning fibers. I'm sure this blog will fall on the list of things that I will soon ignore and forget about doing just like house cleaning, laundry, feeding the fish, etc...

I've only been knitting for about 2 1/2 years now and I've become quite obsess with this little hobby. A little hobby that has finally turned into a big, expensive, running-out-of-room passion of mine now. For Christmas my wonderful hubby order a spinning wheel for me since I have been learning to make my own yarn for my knitting projects. I've been using a basic drop spindle given to me from my knitting buddy Carey Sweeten (This was part of her evil plan to suck me into the world of spinning fiber so that she would have someone to dye fibers with.) and although I'm quite slow in this process, I've still managed to produce a couple of projects from my ever growing fiber collection. Currently I am about a 1/3 of the way through 1 oz. of a silk hankie with no clue on what to do with. I'll probably just spin it all up put it on an empty bobbin and just say "Ooo...it's silk, how exotic". Spinning silk isn't all that hard to do, it hardly needs any twist on it from the draft but it's not all that fun to work with. Very long fibers that stick to everything and if there is any air movement in the room you can pretty much count on those long fibers making their way up your nose.

As for my knitting, I just finished two hats and currently working on mittens to go with the red hat. The green hat was a basic pattern using worsted weight yarn that I made myself. I picked up 16 oz. of a carded wool in a greenish/olive color, spun up on my 2 oz. spindle and finished up with a 2 ply for the yarn.

The red hat is the "An Unoriginal Hat" hat pattern by Stephanie Pearl McPhee, done in Mauch Chunky strawberry red yarn. Originally I had gotten enough yarn to make a basic hat but discover while knitting that I didn't like how it was knitting up. The yarn is a single type of yarn and when knitting at the gauge it felt pretty flimsy and weak, not what I was wanting in a thick, warm hat for winter. So I grab the second skien and knitted with 2 strands thus producing the thick, warm hat look I was going for. Unfortunately this used up my 2 skeins and I ran out before finishing the project. A quick web search and week later I now have 3 skeins now with plenty to make some mittens. The patter for the mittens is "The Basic Cable Mitten" by Amy O'Dell. The mittens knit up pretty quick, I've got the right one done, will start on lefty later tonight.
As I finished the hat up over the holiday weekend, my hubby commented on if I was making the hat for a giant since it looked rather large. "Noooo", I replied back, "it's a thick, warm hat for winter." I didn't see myself complaining about having cold ears last Saturday when we had some snow and lots of cold wind.

Well that's the end of the first blog entry and if anyone is wondering about the name of the blog well...James is a very patience man and is still waiting for some socks.