Knitting and Sitting

What started out as a happy-go-lucky evening from the last post quickly turned into a shitty one upon Drew's arrival home. Literally. He was home, things were fine - a toilet somehow got backed up and then we got into a heated "debate" over the proper way to plunge a toilet. Ahh...the joys of being married! But that's not what I'm here to talk about....tonight anyway.

As I've mentioned before, I've been trying to stay busier this semester and get involved in new, fun, different things. One of those new hobbies is KNITTING. My friend Kathleen approached me a month or two ago and asked if I was interested in learning to knit and taking a class at a cute little shop, The Shabby Sheep, conveniently located about 3 blocks from me. While I've been under the impression for years that knitting is something that old people do or that women write crappy fiction novels about (Friday Night Knitting Club, anyone?), I thought...why not? We jumped in with both feet and never looked back.

Here are some of my first projects:

This is my first attempt at an actual scarf. It was made with small needles and even smaller yarn, so it took weeks and weeks. Not a huge fan of the rainbow pattern but...my mom evidently is. So consider it her's!

This is my second attempt at a scarf. It's made with much bigger needles and much chunkier yarn, so it took about 4 hours. Which isn't much time at all. This scarf will be going to my mother-in-law.

This is what I call my "Valentine" yarn for my "Valentine" scarf...even though Valentine's Day is long gone. The actual pattern is called the "Lumpy Loopy" scarf, after the yarn. See? One of them is LOOPY and the other is LUMPY! In the end, it should look something like...

THIS. God willing.

Knitting has proved to be an EXCELLENT hobby for me and my lifestyle. On the nights I am home, I get to sit in front of the TV, catch up on my shows, and sit and knit. And Drew likes it because I'm always entertained, no matter what's on (football, basketball, baseball, ice dancing, curling, etc.)! This week Lindsay came over and I taught her the beauty of knitting and now she's hooked too. Perhaps we'll have weekly stitching and bitching sessions.

Ronda, our teacher, encouraged us to take our knitting out in public and let people ask us about it - to make knitting a more common thing so more people will do it. I don't think I'm ready for that kind of publicity yet. I just prefer to blog about things for all the world to see.