where my needles at?!

so i know i briefly touched on the topic before, but i recently moved out of my apartment. and when i moved, i made the mistake of taking all of my knitting "stuff" (for lack of a better word) to my parents house. for some reason i thought i would be able to fight the urge to knit. but just like an addict going through withdrawal, i was itching to for just one mitt.
and with all this time on my hands, it was a perfect time to start working on my very first knitting order. so after i received my yarn from Knit Picks, i was pretty excited to get started. until i realized all of my needles were at ma and pa's. f*ck. meg's suggestion, as usual, was to throw money at the problem and just go buy more (HA). my thought was to order a new pair online with my gift certificate. moms suggestion was to overnight the needles i already owned. i decided to go with moms advice.
so i finally got the needles yesterday and set to work on the first scarf. after a couple of hours, i had a small panic attack. the scarf is supposed to be 15" wide, and as i was getting to the end of the yarn, i realized i didnt order enough. f*ck. i was super impressed by my inability to plan ahead or add up yardage. i was about to throw the stupid thing of the floor and give up when i realized i had an entire box of yarn in my room and i should really just take a quick peak before i lost all hope. and alas, i dont suck. and i can do addition. i just cant count balls of yarn. huzzah!
so at this point, im about halfway through scarf numero uno and thinking it's a good thing that i started this is june. it's taking a bit longer than expected, but i guess i will just have to get back in the habit of bringing my knitting everywhere. so take that as a warning, friends, and get your old lady jokes ready.

and in true jessie form, i totes dropped a stitch while taking the following pic. huzzah?

CORRECTION: All She Does is Knit, Knit, Knit, Knit, Knit

I was very excited to see that Meg liked her etch-a-sketch laptop case. When she first asked me to make one, I wasn't sure what to do so it was a nice little ego boost to hear that. I was even more excited when she left me a voice mail telling me that a friend of hers wanted one as well!! woo hoo!! I was hanging my mission accomplished banner above the kitchen table. Alas, it was not meant to be. Her jiggy little Irish friend really just wanted something to keep his beer cold. In other words...game on.



I still don't consider myself a very accomplished knitter, but I have definitely been liking the challenges it has been giving me. The laptop case alone was a trip, as I didn't have a pattern, just a number of stitches that others had cast on to make cases that size.  It was much harder, as the picture below shows. My main problem was that i didn't have 2 balls of red yarn, so I decided to carry the red behind the entire screen. Had I placed a quick call to mom i would have found out that, no, that was not going to work. Lesson learned.

busted original laptop case

 

Anyways.  When I found out he didn't actually want a laptop case I was kind of bummed. i was also in the early stages of knitting a cable scarf that was taking a while. So I decided to take a "quick" break and knit up a beer coozie. Well, at least I thought it would be quick. After frogging a couple of times and wanting to drink my model, I finally finished the coozie. I will be the first to admit that its not the best and definitely needs some changes to the pattern, but I'm still proud of my lil etch-a-sketch coozie!!

So while I might be "win, win, winning," I'm also "knit, knit, knitting!" (I'm not even going to get into the 4 pairs of mittens I've made this week or the quilt I started!!!)

failing seems to be in the water....

so before i start my own tale of fail, i would like to comment on megs last post. as i was sitting enjoying a good ole 'merican beer on the fourth o july, i got the notification that meg had posted. being a good sister and faithful blog follower, i read it right away. and i loved the chick! and i thought was a better way than to prove that it was indeed a chick then to ask everyone i was with what they thought! so without telling them what it was supposed to be, i passed around my phone. everyone was on the chick bandwagon until my dear sweet bf. and ill admit, i was shocked at his response. "its a monkey." wtf. for real? but then he explained it. and i got it. maybe it was the overabundance of 'merican beer, but this is what he, and now i, see.....

(smile added by moi)

get it?

anyways, moving on to my own fail. so for my birthday my mom got a goody bag from The Embraceable Ewe Yarn Shop. Inside was the perfect knitting gift: 3 skeins of light blue yarn, a set of bamboo circular needles and Teva Durham's Ballet T-Shirt pattern. i was very excited and set about winding the yarn- which is a fail i have already blogged about- i think - if not imagine someone w too much yarn and not enough wine. anyways. mom finally wound it up for me at home and i was sent back to dc to knit. however, the first time i read the pattern i decided i had no idea what they were talking about and set it out of my mind. but after finishing that lil pink octo, i decided i could take anything on and decided that the long weekend would be a great time to start!

so i set off on my sweater. and just like mom said, it wasnt that hard. and i was feeling pretty stoked.
see, i figured out that when it says pm i dont have to run out to the store to get markers, i can just make em out of my extra yarn!


and when it says to count rows, there's really no need for a row counter. its totally easier to just write all over your pattern! (i know what youre thinking, what do you do it you want to knit this pattern again?? havent figured that part out yet.)

my biggest problem was knitting the sleeve. i figured out the whole casting on extra stitches on a row, but my arm hole was a little effed up, which hopefully is easily fixable. but here was the problem. it was about this point, 3 nights worth of knitting i believe, that i realized my sweater was the wrong size. i was knitting a cute cap sleeve ballet t for a 5 year old. thank god steve-o just had a baby girl! well that was a sad realization, but instead of tearing the shirt apart, i decided it would be worth it to just finish it up and make sure that next time i wont have as many mistakes....

that line going vertically is supposed to be in the center of the shirt. however, i didnt read the directions completely before starting and missed the whole bit about placing markers in the middle of the front and back on your very first row. oops.

the underneath of this sleeve wasnt that bad. however the increases are supposed to line up differently.

and this ones just a fail all the way around.

so im excited that i finally made something wearable, but it kinda sucks that its only for a small child. but i guess we're all here to learn, right? and the upside is that marm bought enough yarn that i can make another one. although im afraid that my mistake was not being able to knit to the correct gauge. which means everything piece of clothing i make will be child sized. haha. so stay tuned for my howekidsknit etsy shop!