because I don't have enough hobbies

I recently took a trip to our pediatrician and had the most wonderful conversation about knitting.  Our favorite NP, Nancy told me she would knit me a felted purse if I sewed and finished some of her knitting projects for her.  I was SO excited.  She introduced me to www.NoniPatterns.com and I was even more excited!  She casually said, "I bet you could learn to knit."

Another good friend of mine has a hand-knit Etsy store where she sells some pretty cute stuff.  It's called the Pknit Gallery, which is, of course, the cutest name ever for a knitting boutique (go check it out!).  I figured I would try to teach myself to knit a basic stitch online and then ask my friend for help if I got stuck.  YouTube has some good tutorials, so I went to work learning a new hobby.

I decided that I could at least make a scarf for my youngest daughter.  She picked out the orange yarn, and I went to work.  It turned out just fine, but it was full of mistakes here and there.  You wouldn't know it at a glance, and she certainly doesn't care!  She's just happy to have something orange around her neck.  My older daughter asked for a purple hat.  I picked up a book called Felted Knits from the library and decided to make her a felted hat out of wool.  It couldn't be that hard, right?

I started with the beret.  I started, I re-started and I re-started.  I'd get about 12 rows and it would all be completely off.  I think I gave it a good 7 tries.  In a fit of frustration I finally took it out for the last time and moved on to something a little less annoying...a rimmed hat.  That one went swimmingly.  I had mistakes, of course, but I didn't get off count.  And the best part is that the mistakes didn't matter one bit since the whole thing was felted.  I was completely thrown off by terms like "k2tog" and "ssk" and "wrap & turn" as well as pretty much everything besides "purl" and "knit" so I would google the term for a how-to video or look at the glossary in the back of my books.  Turns out they're not that hard, but for a knitting idiot, it was.

When I finished the knitting part, the hat was so big that it looked like a sack.  When I picked my daughter up from school, I tossed her the hat and snapped this picture with my phone:

Then I went home and hand felted it until it was the right size, and I'm loving how it turned out!

drying on some towels

Now I plan to add some flowers, but I need to get to the store to get more yarn colors.