I think it was 2009 when I made a New Year's Resolution to learn how to knit. Why knitting? I thought it would be a good way to get me away from my computer and a fun way to occupy my thoughts and hands. I'd have a tangible result of how I spent my downtime. I'd been wasting so much time scanning Facebook and Go Fug Yourself and Design Sponge and whatever other blog site I was interested in and I had nothing to show for it. If I knew how to knit, I could put my iPhone away and take part in the time-honored tradition of knitting scarves and hats and other homemade projects for family and friends who would soon tire of receiving these gifts. I'd have something useful to do when I had downtime on set. But, most of all, I'd be able to knit a baby blanket for my baby that I hoped to have one day. Well, 2009 came and went and I never learned how to knit. Shocker, right? A New Year's resolution that didn't come to fruition. But I hadn't given up hope. So in 2010 I made the resolution again. Life got a little crazy that year (we had eight weddings in seven different states, among other things) and that resolution got pushed back again. But a new year happened again and again I made a resolution. And this time...I did it. I learned how to knit. My patient friend Lynn sat with me one afternoon, taught me the basic knit stitch and, before I knew it, I was on my way. She gave me yarn and some needles to practice on and I took my project home. After weeks of working, I ended up with an uneven, hole-y...square. I called it a potholder and that little purple blob has a special place in my heart. Since then I've continued to practice and even have a few scarves to show for my downtime. When I wasn't entirely sure of how to cast on or cast off or even tie a slipknot, I found that the HowCast videos were really helpful. And my projects started to have less mysterious holes and more even sides. And, now, in 2012, I find myself pregnant with a baby showing up in four months and I realized..."EEK!" One of the major reasons for wanting to learn to knit was so that I'd be able to knit a blanket for my baby one day. One day was here!
Without realizing that this was a secret goal of mine, my sister emailed me a link with the subject line "Cute!". I clicked the link and was taken to this great knitting blog, The Purl Bee, with the blog post title "New Super Easy Baby Blanket." And not only was the blanket "cute" as my sister had said in her email, it actually looked "super easy" just like the title touted. I had found the baby blanket I would knit for my baby! And it just landed in my inbox without even really asking. Sometimes the universe just knows. Or your sister does...because she is sometimes a little psychic. So I went to JoAnn Fabrics to get a circular needle (which I had never worked on) and the yarn needed to make the blanket:
I suppose I could have chosen any colors that I wanted but the color scheme that the Purl Bee pattern used looked great to me. They represented a sunset over an ocean - perfect for this Florida Girl having a California Baby! And when I started the blanket I still didn't know if this baby was a boy or a girl and I thought the colors worked for either gender.
Starting to knit on circular needles was a challenge. It took me a few hours to finally get it right. My yarn kept being connected to the rest of the yarn when I came to the end of my first row, which clearly was going to make some sort of striped tube...not a blanket! I did some googling and finally figured out that I was starting with the yarn in the wrong hand. Always make sure your yarn is all on the left needle when you start knitting so that you transfer all the stitches to the right. Rookie mistake. Once I got that sorted out, I was able to knit without a problem.
Well, kind of. In the pattern, it says you knit each color for 22 ridges. Each ridge represents two rows. I misunderstood what a ridge was and counted two ridges as one. So when I got to "11 ridges" I thought I was halfway done with my first color. So I kept knitting. And then I realized it looked like this stripe was going a little too long. So I checked back in with the pattern, which (thank goodness!) had a great detailed picture of the finished blanket. I could count on the picture what a ridge was...and I realized my mistake. At this point I had 29 real ridges, which meant I had knitted about 14 rows too many. Not wanting to undo all that work I decided to go ahead and just switch colors then with the first color being a little too long. I decided I would knit the other colors the right amount of ridges (22) and then for the final color I would knit 29 ridges to give the blanket symmetry. Ta-da!
But now I had to switch colors. The one part of the pattern that looked challenging to me (before I ran into my other challenges) was switching colors of yarn. That was something I had never done before. Thank goodness for eHow! I found a great how-to video that showed me how to switch colors and it was much easier than I expected! So easy in fact, that I've already started on my third of seven colors:
This blanket is going to get finished before Baby Boy arrives, for sure - which is something I thought would NOT happen. But it really is an easy pattern - thanks Purl Bee! - and I'm working on it a bit each day. I even took it to the dentist's office to work on while I waited and it turns out my hygienist, Doug, is a master knitter. We bonded over knitting talk. He was once a professional ballet dancer, his mom is the one who taught him how to knit and he showed me pictures of some baby clothes he did...OhEmGee, y'all. He is way more advanced than my scarf and blanket adventures. Something to aspire to! Maybe the next baby will get cute little knitted clothes from his/her mama...ha! Who am I kidding? Once Baby Boy arrives in February I'm pretty sure I won't have tons of time to learn new knitting techniques for years to come! But at least now I know how to do a baby blanket!
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