It keeps the weirdos away

I’ve always been a crafty person. I’m sly, but I’m also into the making things kind of crafts as well. My grandmother taught me how to do needlepoint when I was 6 because I tended to be excessively somewhat hyper when I was small and she noticed that reading and doing needlepoint were about the only two times while I was awake that I would stay still for longer than 5 minutes at a time.

In high school, my best friend taught me how to crochet and also to cross-stitch. Crocheting was really frustrating in the beginning and I made many Christmas Tree type potholders (they would start out as a square, I’d miss a stitch here and there at the ends and before you knew it, my potholder would come to a point. Which is great if I’d wanted to make a Christmas tree potholder. But I didn’t, at least not every potholder) before I finally practiced enough to move from inexperienced beginner to seasoned expert.

I had always wanted to learn how to knit, but it seemed impossible–I am left handed and all my friends who knew how to knit and were willing to share the secrets were right handed and I just would end up getting lost and frustrated and forced to make comments about how superior crocheting was and why would I want to learn how to knit anyway.

That is, until we moved to Virginia and I knew absolutely no one where we lived. Being brave and trying to find my way around our new town, I happened upon the one decent yarn shop. Lo and behold, they had a sign-up sheet for knitting lessons on the counter. The grandmotherly woman who taught my class made it seem so easy–once I had the basics down, I wondered why it had been so hard to learn and why I had been so obstinate about learning before.

Even though I have been knitting for a little over two years and would consider myself to be somewhat of a novice, there are some things I don’t enjoy working on–namely large projects (i.e. adult sweaters, blankets). Lately I have discovered the best sock pattern (I own three that I paid $5 apiece for and my favorite? I found for free online) for baby and toddler socks and the most fun yarn to make it in.

I may not be the brightest bulb in the drawer as far as examples for Owen go, but at least his feet won’t be cold or boring this winter.

Elann-really great online store for really nice but inexpensive yarn.

Knitpicks-another great place for reasonably priced nice yarn–they also have some beautiful patterns (some free, some inexpensive). Their catalogue is good tub reading material.

Knit Baby Sock Pattern–out of all the patterns I’ve made from, this is pretty easy and the socks turn out really cute with self-striping yarn.