Knitting

As the weather has gotten cooler, I've been picking up my knitting again after letting most of it lay around for the summer.

I'm not a great knitter. I'm pretty much stuck at the beginner stage... but I like it.

My sister pushed me into learning to knit a few years ago by giving me several knitted dishcloths. I loved those dishcloths, they were my favorites, but they wore out... and I couldn't keep asking her to knit me more all the time. So I had to learn to knit so I could replace them.

I still knit dishcloths, here is my favorite kind... soft and nubby...

Knitting dishcloths is nice and mindless. I can knit while the kids are bowling, or at softball practice,  I even knit in movie theaters sometimes. (It's either knit or doze off and the kids make fun of me when I doze off!)

Recently I joined an online knit-along, which has been a lot of fun. Each month we make a different afghan square. It will take a year and a half but eventually I'll have enough squares for a nice big afghan. This knitting has been more challenging than what I've done before (ANY knitting is more challenging then making dishcloths!) but the woman who put the knit-along together is wonderful about walking us through new stitches and techniques. It's kind of been an online knitting class for me...

This month we are working on one with a pink ribbon, in honor of breast cancer awareness month. My mother had breast cancer and I've been thinking of her a lot while I knit this square... Remembering when she told me she had cancer, and how we both cried a little, but how she was the stronger one, reassuring me... when I should have been reassuring her. And then, after the surgery, when she was in so much pain, she had a big purple stuffed bunny that another breast cancer survivor had given her to hug "when it hurts".  We have that bunny now... it's M's... and he also hugs it when he hurts... although his hurt is a much different kind than the physical pain my mother felt after her mastectomy.

Anyway (I'm so distractible, aren't I?) I've been knitting a lot lately. Working on the knit-along, knitting a few dishcloths, and... my most challenging project to date... working on a sweater for one of my grandkids. Jove inspired me to pick the sweater up again (after not working on it for months) and I'm happy with the way it's turning out. Both sleeves are done and I'm working my way up the body.

I do most of my knitting at night, after the kids go to bed, but I'm not alone... I always have at least one or two dogs laying at my (on my!) feet.

The other evening I had to make a couple of smaller balls of yarn for my afghan square... I had pulled about 10 yards of yarn from the skein and cut it off, but as I started to wrap it up again, I felt some resistance... I looked down and realized that Sweet Pea had sat quietly by me, not moving, while I covered her with yarn.

Isn't she cute?

I pulled the yarn off Sweet Pea and kept rolling it up, only to run into more resistance. I followed the end of the yarn around the back of the chair to the other side and found this:

Quin had somehow walked through the middle of my yarn before settling down and falling asleep...

Eventually I got my yarn wrapped and back to knitting.

Here are some of the afghan squares I've made so far (some of them aren't blocked yet)...

Here's the beginning of the breast cancer awareness square, the pink is the beginning of the pink ribbon that will be knitted into the square.