I'm a Knit Wit!

Technically I've been knitting for years - but as with most things I do - it ebbs and flows.  The last time I picked up knitting (about 3 years ago) I started branching out and trying to learn different stitches and patterns.  This fall I signed up to buy gifts for a couple of senior citizens on an "Angel Tree" at work, and one of them asked for a scarf - which I figured I would just knit myself - and the knitting bug was back!

After I knitted that scarf, I decided to make my mom a scarf for Christmas. This thick yarn in this pattern knitted really fast - I finished this in one day!

                           

Next I decided to knit myself something, so I looked through some patterns on Ravelry.com and Pinterest and decided to go with a cowl - It's basically a short infinity scarf done in the same pattern as the one above, and then sewn together at the ends - crazy complicated, right?

Since I was on a roll, I started looking for some more complicated things.  I have knitted dish cloths in the past, but was never able to do the "cool" kind where they are knitted on the diagonal - because you have add and then take away stitches from your rows.  I found a pattern that sounded easy enough when I read it, so I tried it:

        

And it worked! I love these rags - I will definitely be making more of these.

I found this next yarn around Christmas and I thought it would look good as a scarf with my yellow coat, so that's what was next:

 I did a little chevron pattern on this - which was really fun - but obviously this yarn is too busy to do this pattern, because you have to look really hard to notice the pattern.

With all of these fabulous projects under my belt, I thought it was time to go further - I started looking for sweater patterns!! I found an open front cardigan that looks simple enough, so that's on my list, but first, I came across this online class through Michael's and their sister-site Craftsy.com:

This nice lady, Amy Ross, with all of her perfect bins of yarn behind her (which distract me more often than I care to admit - Aren't they wonderful!?!?)

She goes step by step through each piece of the project, and in approximately 522 days I will have knitted a sweater! Well, hopefully not quite that long, but we'll see.

You start with back, this is the bottom ribbing part (and my super-cool yarn bowl by C & S Clay)

Here is my progress to date - not too much more til I get to the arm holes - that should be interesting!

I just love that from a ball of yarn you can create and actual thing that people can use! It's like magic =)

Do you knit? Crochet? Something else?