Joining In

When it comes to knitting I can be easily influenced. Ginny's Yarn Along is a great source of inspiration, new ideas and, oftentimes, distractions! I enjoy looking at other people's projects and planning my own version. Often I will have my knitting queue set and then see something new which changes the whole sequence. This happened last summer when another yarn alonger made a gorgeous blanket, and I fell in love. I immediately favorited the pattern and made a note of the yarn used. It took a month or two before I bought the yarn, but I knew I wanted to make a blanket like the one made by Lori.

That yarn has been sitting in a little pile waiting for me to start. I kept coming up with other projects that needed to be done first. Honestly, I wasn't sure I really wanted to tackle a blanket. Last week I had just the nudge I needed to begin. Lori mentioned a knit along starting for the Leaves of Grass pattern she used for her blanket. I immediately knew I had to join. It was the little push I needed to change the yarn from skein to project. I quickly signed up before I could make any more excuses. I even bought the pattern that same night.

With the disappearing loop tutorial in front of me, I cast on this week. It took a few times of ripping out and reknitting before I felt like I was making progress. Part of this may be that I tried knitting Chart A while at the park with my kiddos. It isn't easy watching kiddos climb an adjacent butte while trying to read a knitting chart. I prevailed and am halfway through the first chart. I love it thus far. It is really beautiful. I know I won't finish this any time soon, but I now have a great project to work on while we drive across country again!

As far as reading, I have been focused on a pile of financial and lifestyle books. Dave and I know the life we want to live; we are just trying to figure out how to better fund it. For entertainment, I am listening to a good audiobook entitled The Newlyweds. It is about a woman from Bangladesh who marries an American she met online. It is quite good. I am nearing the middle and things are getting quite interesting. Hopefully I will finish it soon and be able to give a full recommendation.

What it looked like last night spread out