A package came for me in the mail. They had to ring the doorbell and have me sign for it. My sweet postal worker was so excited to hand me a package from Japan. She said, “I’ve been wondering what this is?” as she handed it to me. I had to laugh because this little envelope was full of these…

I ordered my knitting needles through eBay and found that I could get an entire lot of bamboo needles (each size between 0 through 15) for only $20, which included the shipping total! It is hard to do projects when you only have one set of needles so I was so thrilled to finally get them. It took an entire month for them to make their way to my house, but they were in surprisingly good condition. Two of the little tops did come off, but with a little crafting glue, I was able to put them right back together. I started using them as soon as I got them in my hot little hand and I plan to order circular and double-pointed needles through eBay as well.

With the kids playing outside almost every day, I am doing the majority of my knitting outside. The wind was blowing my patterns all over the lawn though so I brought my cookbook stand outside and rested my books and printed patterns in there. Mine has a plastic cover that protects the book and I thought it would be handy to jot down where I left off in my pattern with a dry erase marker. This has made it a lot easier to see my pattern while I am knitting!

My mother-in-law also purchased one of these knitting canisters for me so I could take my knitting on the road. I love it because it keeps my yarn nice and clean if we are outside or in the car. I was planning to make one out of a coffee canister with a hole on the top and she ended up buying me one instead. Much more fashionable than my hobo version!

One of you lovely knitters also recommended that I join ravelry and I finally joined! I absolutely love this site for finding patterns and sharing my work. It took two days for my invitation to join the community came, but it was so worth the wait. I am now able to work through patterns on the site and it motivates me to work towards some new knitting goals. My username on this site is momadvice, just in case you want to look me up and be my first friend!

This has been a summer of washcloths for me and the latest pattern I completed was two double-woven washcloths. I am working on these for Christmas and holiday hostess gifts. The next item to work on will be knitting some slippers because I want to put together spa baskets for some of the great women in my life. Hopefully, I can master increasing (which seems to be difficult for me) so I can start making pairs of these to go with all of these cute washcloths.

I have started working on my first prayer shawl, now that I am starting to get the hang of this knitting thing. My mother-in-law had a beautiful pattern that she was working on so I thought I would attempt that. Unfortunately, six tries left me feeling less prayerful and more frustrated because the pattern was a bit too complex for my novice knitting self. The pattern is really lovely, but was all yarn overs, knit two togethers, and purling. No regular old knitting at all! I am hoping that I can do this in the future, but I needed to find something a little easier for my first shawl.

My mother-in-law brought over some patterns for me to try and I went on some websites and read through some comment threads on prayer shawls. One comment suggested a very easy and pretty prayer shawl that would come together well for a first time knitter.

You can use any size of large circular needles with this pattern and the bigger the needles, the more lacy the look. I am knitting with size eleven circular needles.

Here is the pattern:

Knit 4 stitches
Next Row: Knit 2 stitches, yarn over, knit two stitches
Repeat knitting 2 stitches, yarn over, and then knitting
Repeat this pattern until your shawl measures 60-70″

This is perfect because it wasn’t a large amount of casting on and you work from the tip of the shawl and build up with each yarn over. The only thing I have to remember is to yarn over after the first two stitches and then I just knit the rest.

This frees my mind to concentrate on the task at hand, which is to pray for someone who needs prayer. I am praying for a woman who is struggling to get pregnant and has not been able to. She has gone through a lot and I am hoping that this shawl will bring her some comfort. I actually have never met her, but she is a friend of our family and I know that it will mean a lot to her to know that someone is thinking of her.

Here are a few free patterns for prayer shawls that I have found:

Prayer Shawl With Garter Stitch Stripes

Prayer Shawl/Healing Shawl

Alix’s Lace Prayer Shawl

Homespun Knit Prayer Shawl

Prayer Shawl Crochet Pattern

Triangular Prayer Shawl

Prayers (can attach and say these prayers)

I am looking forward to making more of these and venturing into more complicated patterns in the future!

Well, I finished my first baby blanket- I am so proud! I have a couple of weeks to spare before our trip to St Louis so I did get this done in plenty of time.

I tied the blanket off with some ribbon and stamped up a little congratulations card to tie on the outside. I spent $8 in yarn (a little more than I maybe should have, but I am still learning) and I know I would have spent a lot more if I would have bought this in the store. This yarn is so soft and irresistible and this blanket was like a little furnace on my knees as I knitted it.

The garter stitch worked well with this bulky yarn, but I was pretty bored with this project about two days into it. It was great to work on though while I watched television and hung out with the kids and was a fun project for a beginning knitter.

The next project I am working on is sets of washcloths for my mom and sister. My mom’s birthday is coming up and I thought I would make her some of these to go along with her present. My sister requested some of these because she loves them for my nephew’s sensitive skin. Washcloths are a lot more portable than this giant blanket was so I look forward to experimenting with some patterns and different colors. I have been finding some great patterns online and have been adding my own little touch to them. I will be sure to share this when I am done.

Thanks for bearing with me through all of these knitting posts. It feels as though a whole new world has opened up to me and I am enjoying it so much!

Guess what? I didn’t know how to purl. This is not the purl stitch, but I will now lovingly refer to this as the, “Amy Purl.”

I showed my mother-in-law this scarf and she had a bit of a confused look on her face. She wanted to know which stitches I had been doing. I explained that this was knitting and purling (I thought she would know that by now) and she had an amused expression on her face. Um….yeah, not so much.

This is the “Amy Purl” which actually looks quite lovely and nice and straight, but is not purling at all. Everything I was doing was completely backwards so now I am learning how to purl correctly. This is a lot harder now that I did an entire scarf the wrong way. It is like trying to reteach my brain and I keep wanting to do things the wrong way.

Instead of our planned hat tutorial, my lesson was on how to purl correctly. I guess I will try hats when I can master the purling. We did talk a lot about all of these crazy pattern techniques, which are so confusing and my head felt like it was spinning after learning all of these abbreviations.

I do want to say though that I am not at all frustrated. Nope, not at all. I am good enough, I am smart enough….

Perhaps, I was a bit too confident in my knitting abilities.

This is the last scarf I am sharing for the week. This one was done in about three hours and it is my absolute favorite one so far. Since I am a beginning knitter, I checked out this amazing book called, “Teen Knitting Club,” by Jennifer Wenger. If you are just starting out to knit, I would HIGHLY recommend this book because it has awesome beginner projects and they are actually cool too.

This is their Dropped-Stitch Scarf and it requires size 15 needles and a chunky yarn (I used medium yarn that my mother-in-law had given me from her yarn stash and it looks amazing).

Here is a close-up picture of what the stitches look like. I just love the way the dropped stitches make this scarf look a tad more feminine.

And this is what it looks like on someone. Isn’t it so incredibly awesome looking? I have to say, this is about as proud as I have been with my knitting. I kept looking at it and saying, “I can’t believe I am making stuff.”

Soooooo proud!