Melanie's Thoughts and Musings on Life

Last week, my husband came home from work and said there was a bag at our door. He brought it in, and to my surprise, it was a bag of yarn! I looked for a note, and it said "I hope you can use this for your knitting." It was from a lady at my church who happens to live in my neighborhood. She is a crocheter, and the yarn was too fine for her to use (she makes chunky blankets). Anyway, I have lots of stuff on my needles, but I am more than happy to have been the recipient of the yarn. I have now been looking for patterns to make with my new stash. I finally finished the multicolored shawl that I mentioned last week. I wasn't sure how it would look when finished because it is varigated but it doesn't look too bad, so trust the process. Believe it or not, I actually weaved in the ends as soon as I finished! I learned how to do it properly and now I don't mind weaving in the ends. I know it is every knitter's nightmare, but it is not so bad- it is easier than seam...

So this week, I finally made some progress! I have a lot of projects on the needles, but that is okay, it helps me when I get bored with one thing to switch to another.  I am making a shawl and I think I am on about the 4th try with using this yarn. It is colorful and I realized that making a shawl with multicolored yarn probably isn't a great idea, though I am going to continue with it. It will be a knit that I am donating to charity and although I am very critical of my own work, I am sure someone will appreciate it. Note to self, try in a solid color next time. Then, I picked up some yarn that is ombre, and I am making another shawl with that. It starts as pink  then gradually turns into purple. It will take a while to make this one, the needle is small (3.75 mm).  I did finish another dishcloth this week. I am trying to have a large stash of them. I have promised to make a few for some ladies in my church. I do not charge for this stuff, but it does take time so I lik...

I didn't make a lot of progress on my knitting projects this week, I did some frogging again too. I spent the week looking for patterns that might challenge me in my knitting journey. I found a pattern for a blanket for cancer patients that has a lot of cancer type messages on it like courage, love, fighter etc. I thought I should make this blanket, and that I could continue learning and honing my knitting skills. I thought making the blanket might be fun until I saw how involved of a process it is to make a bauble. All the words on the blanket are done using baubles, which means knitting into 1 stitch 6 times then back and forth from one needle to the next, changing colors and more. The blanket would take me a million hours! I also thought that after being a knitter for over 20 years, it was time for me to learn how to read charts. After researching charts and asking for advice from other knitters, I decided written patterns work better for me. I don't think in blocks and numb...

This has been a crazy week in my crafting journey. I wanted to start something new, and I wasn't liking how a shawl I was making was turning out. Then I have some yarn which is really pretty, but I couldn't find the right pattern to make with it. I finally found a needle and a pattern for the nice yarn, then I realized that I couldn't keep track of the stitches because the needle was so small and the stitches were too. I gave up on that. Just when I was starting to make some progress on the shawl, I came to the end of a counted row and I didn't have enough stitches- I frogged the whole thing! On the plus side, I did finish some hanging dishtowels that are a gift for a bridal shower and I also finished a couple of dishcloths. Now I just need to weave in the ends and sew on the buttons. It is good to take a break sometimes. I was frustrated. Even though I frogged a shawl that I had been working on, I feel okay about it. It wasn't turning out like I had envisioned and ...