Knit One, Purl One

Several years ago, Sister Goodlaff taught me how to knit. A few months ago, I discovered I've been doing it wrong this whole time. I clicked on an online tutorial for backwards knitting, because I thought, hey, that would be a cool skill, and it turned out I already knew how to do it. I also discovered that when I thought I was knitting, I was just mostly faking it. Oh, the things you can learn on YouTube...

Right or not, I consider myself a beginner-ish knitter. I have a fair amount of scarves, I dabble in beanies and berets, and I seem to enjoy torturing myself with the occasional baby blanket pattern when my friends and family are with child. My latest endeavor was just such a blanket.

One of my best friends from high school was due in May, right around the Goodlaff wedding date. Had I been a bit more organized, I could have had it done in time for the birth, but I wasn't and it wasn't. So it goes.

I slogged through the blanket all summer long. Even if you're not a knitter, it doesn't take a genius to figure out why knitting isn't really a good summertime activity. Oodles and oodles of yarn sitting on your lap in the scorching summer sun = not fun. I spent hours in the car, knitting ten, purling ten, until one day, I was magically, finally finished. Now that mama and baby have gotten a chance to see and appreciate all my summer stitching, I thought I'd share the outcome:

I love the way it came out, considering I wasn't really working off a pattern. It was more of an idea, proving once again that as long as it's relatively simple, it's hard for me to screw it up too badly...

My next project?  Something for my new niece, H!