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?

knitting maps, for friends

outer banks

one of the blogs i follow, Maps For Friends, is written by a good friend who, obviously, loves all things map related.  so it was no surprise when he requested some knitting that was also map related. after much contemplation, i settled on making a pot holder. in my head i was thinking this would be another "quick knit" to break up the monotony of the scarf i've been working on. i need to stop thinking i can "quick knit" anything.
my first issue was creating a pattern. a quick google search brought up tons of images of world maps, but as you might know, world maps are not perfect squares. so i found a picture that i thought would work, threw it into Knit Pro 2.0 and voila.

row of condemned, beachfront houses

then i had another problem. if i was just going to throw this together as a favor, i wasn't really going to take the time to drive all the way to the knitting store for new yarn, so i had planned on just using some of my stash. but when making a pot holder, can one use acrylic yarn or will it melt?? i googled some more, and couldn't find a consensus, so i opted to not try it. luckily i had some cotton yarn left over from my pathetic attempt at making a shirt.
so onwards and upwards. i decided how many stitches i wanted to cast on (45) and went over to ravelry to look for some hints. boy was i surprised. apparently there is this thing called double knitting that is used to make potholders which makes the project thicker and knits the design on both sides. well. after watching plenty of YouTube videos, i decided that was not for me. the plan was to knit one square with the pattern, and then knit a plain square and sew the two together.

5 balls of yarn at work!

the adventure began and it was taking forever. so when i was asked to head to the outer banks for a  weekend, i couldn't resist. finishing a travel related project on a weekend trip sounded perfect! well, that didn't happen. the weather was beautiful and i spent most of my time either walking on the beach or hanging out with the locals in a bar.
so it was back to dc to finish. once i actually settled in to work on it, the work didn't actually take that long. and once the front was done, the back only took a couple of hours, although i assume it takes much less time for a more polished knitter.  so here is the final product....

all done!

the colors seem a bit off, probably because it was taken at 1am when i finally finished it. to sew it together, i put the right sides together and started in one corner. once three sides were sewn, i flipped it right side out and stitched the two sides together in the middle, about every inch or so. my only concern when i decided to make 2 separate pieces was that they would be too floppy once put together. hopefully my stitches will stay together and keep the pot holder sturdier.

i tried to take a better picture with natural light to give a better sense of the true colors, but it was too bright for my camera w the shades open. it kind of shows a difference, although not as much as i would have hoped.
so all in all, pot holder success. if i make anymore of these, i will probably use a bigger needle and bulkier yarn, just to make the process go a bit faster. i imagine most knitters could whip this baby out in less than an hour. oh well. at least my work isn't pulling as much when i use two colors!!!

cuddle buddies

now time for an update. you may remember the post by meg about the Nikolas pillow i made and how he was scared to go near it. well, the tides have turned. Nikolas and pillow Nikolas have now bonded. and my work here is complete.

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!!!)