Giddy

That's how I feel this morning. I was so thrilled to sign on and see three comments to my blog...all from readers of the Yarn Harlot, of course...and the Yarn Harlot herself was the first to post a comment!! I'm So Thrilled!! Yes, I know, she said it's a community. We read her blogs, she reads ours...still! Very thrilling to see three comments on my very first ever blog.

OK, enough gushing!

So, yesterday I said I only had one project on needles. And that's the truth...but that's because I've sort of let my sampler afghan fall by the wayside. This was my third project. I picked it up thinking I'd learn lots of new stitches and with all that knitting, I'd get plenty of practice and eventually a nice, even tension. Of course, the problem with that plan is the tension on the afghan is all over the place! And some of the errors in this thing are dramatically bad. We're not talking about "Hey, I'll bet you can't find my error" type thing. We're talking about "Good God! How many margaritas were you drinking while you were knitting this?!" type thing. This is where the knitters in my group say "Oh, it can't be that bad...you're just being overly critical". Which is when I whip out my nine (out of 20 *groan*) completed squares:

This was my first. Probably not a good choice for my first block. The tension is so tight it measures somewhere closer to 9" instead of 12. And whereas the bobbles are all supposed to be alternating, some of them line up quite nicely

The shell pattern for the second actually turned out well enough
and there aren't any dramatic errors...
I remember thinking I might just be catching on to
this knitting thing....

And then came the hearts! Doesn't it look great!
That's because you can't tell that it's almost big enough to be an afghan all by itself! All the blocking in the world won't bring this behemoth down to 12"

Still, not being one to give up easily, I pressed on. I had had good luck with yarn-overs in the shell pattern, so I attacked the alternating lace pattern and it turned out nice enough (I haven't blocked any of these yet, so, really, who knows?!)

And finally, I was ready to try my first cable pattern. This looks great! But then, of course, it ought to, considering how many times it got frogged, tinked and generally cursed at. Thank God for Patricia who finally frogged it back to the right spot and got me started on the right track.

So, time to tackle cables and yarn-overs, and that, as well as the Fancy Lozenge and Semi Woven Lattice patterns came out well...that's five in a row! Obviously, I really did have a solid grasp of this knitting thing now....

Yep...pride goeth before a fall alright! It's not surprising that this was my last block. But I've got it figured out: The trinity stitch can be made into a small pillow, the heart stitch can be made into a large pillow, and I think this could be made into a lovely skein of yarn! Which means that I don't have 9/20 blocks put together for this afghan. I have 6/20. Hardly a surprise that I've decided to set this aside for awhile.