My new hobby.

I've taken up knitting! I'm a knitter! And I'm so totally excited about it. I love the idea of making things to wear. I've done a lot of cross stitching and my friend Alicia and I have a shared craft blog. But, I haven't really created anything that I could wear. And, if you've been following along here at Chicken Fried Sushi, you know I likes things to wear.

Of course - before I even bought yarn or needles - I ran out and purchased a book full of difficult and complicated patterns.

Because, you know...that's smart. Sigh. Then I backtracked and went online. I found Lion Brand Yarn's Learn to Knit section really clear and helpful. It has both illustrated instructions and videos for each stitch. I also read somewhere on these here Interwebz that a knit stitch scarf was a very easy first project. So I made one!

When I finished it, I realized that I had dropped two stitches right next to each other which created a hole in the scarf.  So, I knitted a little rose out of my super awesome yet difficult book to plug the hole and it came out really cute!  But, also the size of half Cheeseball's head.  I tried to modify the pattern to make it smaller but apparently modifying patterns is waaaay over my pay grade.  I ended up just knitting a few rows of knit 2, purl 2 and then stitching the ends together and gathering the "flower" in the center.  I may go back and add a little button in the middle of it at some point.  I'm actually glad I made that mistake, because I think the flower is really cute on the scarf.

I think she likes it, too!

I ordered The Chicks with Sticks Guide to Knitting: Learn to Knit with More Than 30 Cool, Easy Patterns and can't wait for it to get here! A lot of the patterns on line are easy and you can certainly learn to knit with them but they fall woefully short on the cool criterion.

I also can't wait to hit up the new etsy shop of an old high school friend. She weaves and hand dyes her own fibers and they are so beautiful. I'll need to wait until the things I knit doen't have holes that need to be plugged or wildly varied stitch sizing. So, it could be a while...