Now I can post pictures! Woo!

Steve got a new, very awesome, digital camera and I bought his old cheap one.
Here's some pictures of my blanket. It's the only thing I've been working on.





Really, it's such a big project that I never thought I'd knit a blanket. It's still kind of daunting- I like instant gratification like socks and hats- but I like it.

It's really coming along nicely. I'm doing rows of eight squares each and I'm currently on row 5. It might come out ugly and that makes me sad. I was hoping that somehow all of that ugly yarn together would make something nice. Maybe it will and maybe it won't, but I still want to make this blanket to use up that yarn.

I think I've grown out of livejournal...

...and none of my LJ friends want to read about knitting anyway. This blog will be boring without pictures, but hopefully I can get a digital camera soon. Maybe for my birthday. Until then, descriptions will have to suffice.

Right now I have two things on the needles. One is a pair of socks for my boyfriend, Ben. The pattern, called Thuja, can be found here. I let him pick a yarn for it out of my stash, provided that he didn't choose all wool. There is no way he could be convinced to handwash socks and I didn't want my hard work felted away. He picked this blue acrylic stuff that my grandmother gave me when I was learning to knit. I think it's ugly and scratchy, but he seems to like it.
I just knit this same pattern not too long ago in a tan superwash wool. Ben and I have roughly the same size feet (I'm 5" taller) and I was torn over whether to give the socks to him or keep them myself. They turned out a little too narrow for his feet so I ended up keeping them. I absolutely love the pattern though.

My other project is a mitered squares blanket (I don't like the word afghan- it sounds so old-ladyish) to get rid of some of my stash. I'm using up the crappy acrylic stuff. The more I can get rid of the better, since I'm moving to Washington, DC for graduate school in a few months. This is my first experiment with mitered knitting and I LOVE it! I've even dreamed up some projects to use this technique, which will be much more interesting than a blanket.

The first thing I thought of when I started knitting the mitered squares was to invent a mitered lace pattern and design a skirt around it. Something flowey, above the knee, perfect for summer. I would need to figure out how to create an A-line shape with the squares first. I'm kind of pear shaped, so a pencil skirt wouldn't work.

The second Idea I had for mitered knitting emerged when my roommate Steve saw me doing the blanket squares. He remarked that I group of four squares I had knitted looked like a tetris piece. That's when the lightbulb went off in my head- I want to do a felted messenger bag with a tetris theme! I'd get a bunch of wool, maybe Cascade 220, in all the colors of the tetris pieces and design a tetris game for mitered squares! Knit it in the shape of a bag, felt it, and it will be the most wicked awesome bag you've ever seen. First I just need the money for all of that yarn!