Pint-sized Scarf

I finished my Harry Potter themed house colors scarf bookmark tonight. I actually think it's kinda cute. It served it's purpose in giving me a small project that I could practice my new (practically non-existent) crocheting skills, and it was small, so it only took me a couple of days to finish. I think I'll practice some new patterns with the remaining yarn, though.

Learning to Frog

From about.com:

Frog
Definition:

If you make a mistake in your knitting and don't notice it for several rows, the best course of action for fixing it is to remove the work from the needle and simply rip out the rows you have completed since you made the mistake.

This process is known as frogging because you have to just "rip it" and move on.

It's not much fun to have to frog your projects, but you'll be glad you did rather than leaving in a mistake you could have fixed.

Yeah, I messed up. Quite badly, actually. I know I'm knitting holes on purpose with this Branching Out scarf, but I made a really big hole *sigh* As it's in a lacy-part, I really have no idea how to "rip until I get to a mistake-free" row. Picking up stitches is something I've not really done a lot of, and this is beyond my novice-level skills. So at some point this weekend, I'm going to rip it all out and start over. On the plus side, at least now I can start with a freshly wound ball of yarn that I can pull from the center.

Branching Out

My current project obsession is a scarf pattern called Branching Out. It's my first attempt at lace knitting, and so far it's kinda neat to knit holes and actually mean to. So far I've only knit 35 or so rows, and I figure I have around 20-25 more pattern repeats before it's a decent size. I decided that I would just go with it if I made some mistakes (which I have), but I don't think they're too terribly noticeable.

I'm keeping pictures posted on Flickr to track my progress.

Ball Winder!

My ball winder arrived today from Annie's Attic, and I think this is the start of something awesome. I don't think it will do a full skein of the larger weight yarns, but I balled up a skein of MicroSpun tonight just to try it out, and I love it!

Starting Out

Now that I'm getting the hang of Ravelry, I thought I would set up a separate blog for my crafts. I think I'm finished setting up my color schemes, page elements, and fonts. I would still like to add a page element to the left with an image that shows my progress on the projects I'm actively working on, and I need to flesh out the active projects and queue lists. Not a bad start, though :)

I spent a little time last night learning how to purl. I've become pretty good at the basic knit stitch, so I worked a bit on going between knit and purl on individual rows and on the same row. It wasn't all the difficult, it just felt a bit weird.

Today I ordered a ball winder for my skeins of yarn to make it easier when working long projects. I'm excited! Hopefully it won't take too terribly long to arrive. I also (recently) ordered yarn to knit a handwarmer pattern that I found on Ravelry, and tonight I ordered some yarn to crochet Harry Potter bookmarks. I've not yet completed a crochet project, and these are small enough, I think they'll be a fun way to learn.