Celebrations, Part 5: Knitiversary (and contest winner)

So as to not keep you in suspense, the winner of the birthday contest is...can I have the envelope please?

No Country For Old Men!

What? Oh, sorry...wrong envelope. The winner is...

Caroline!

The fates were in her favor, 'cause as it turns out, she has the same birthday as me! Caroline, I've emailed you for your color choice for the Malabrigo. Congrats!

On to another celebration, I'm observing my knitiversary this month. Now, I don't have a specific day or anything, but it's now been 2 years since I started knitting--just not 24 consecutive months. Here's the story:

It was December 2004, and I was shopping for Christmas gifts at the Barnes & Nobles. There was a woman there knitting a nice scarf with very novel-looking yarn that I had never seen before. And for some reason, I was drawn to it. Something in my mind clicked, and I suddenly decided I wanted to learn how to knit. I guess my brain was just primed for it and got the stimulus it needed. A few days later, I went to a Michael's and picked out what I thought was a neat yarn. I brought it home, googled some stuff on the internet, and stumbled across knittinghelp.com.

Well, I sat there for over an hour and couldn't figure out what was what, even though I was just trying to do garter stitch. Turns out, I chose an eyelash yarn for my first project. Brilliant. I did finally end up with something that looked kinda like a scarf, and I even wore it out in public, but it did not last. There were so many dropped stitches and inadvertent yarn-overs on that thing that it became kind of a mess. I don't have the original anymore, but I do still have a smaller version of it that I made for my daughter with the leftovers. This was my second attempt, so it came out better and is still intact.


After that, I went to a *real* yarn store and they helped me pick out some yarn for the Frida poncho from Knitty (which I can't find the link to, for some reason). It was basically a big rectangle, and I never did sew it up as a poncho, but I was enthralled by the leaf motif and still keep it as a decorative thingey on one of my chairs.


I was definitely hooked! For the next 9 months, I did a slew of projects. I wish I had thought to photograph them all. There was felting and lace and sweaters and a couple of things I made up myself. I loved it!

But then, I got pregnant. And while I thought that I would be spending that time making utterly cute and tiny things, the reality is that I couldn't stand to knit at all. It made me so nauseous to knit! During my first pregnancy, I had had a strong aversion to the smell of seaweed in Japanese cooking, which I normally love. This time around, it was an aversion to knitting and all things associated with it. Weird, huh? The feeling was so strong that even after my delivery, I had no interest in anything fiber-related. Not for almost a year and a half.

And then one day, in December again, it was cold and I longed for a scarf. And so I made one. And just like that, I was back. In honor of this 2-year knitiversary, I am going to make a contribution to Ravelry. I think they are great!

Thanks for putting up with the walk down memory lane. Let's fast forward to the present, and I'll show you my WIP's.

The body for Athos is all knit up, as is the neckband trim. I have blocked them and need to sew on the trim and then pick up stitches to make that cool medallion. I have not yet knitted the sleeves, though, because I was going to use the sleeves from the Porthos design. Well, it seems there is a mistake, and the printed directions for both sets of sleeves are the same, even though they are clearly different in the picture. I posted about this on the Norah Gaughan forum on Ravelry, which Norah herself frequents, and I am waiting to hear back.


And finally, here is Mirabella. I really am so impressed by all the detailing in this pattern. The back is all done and I'm going to block it and make sure everything is on track before I knit the rest.