Knitting

As many of you know, I love to crochet. I've never been very good at knitting, though. My old piano/voice teacher, Mrs. B, taught me to knit. She was the neatest lady ever. She refused to let me pay for my lessons most of the time (and when I did pay, she only charged like $5) and she would always have fresh baked goodies and juice or milk or soda waiting before the lesson... then after our lessons she would teach me new crochet and knitting techniques and all kinds of neat things like that. But as awesome as Mrs. B was, this post isn't about her.
As I said, I love to crochet. I don't like watching TV or movies unless I have something else to do at the same time, so I've gotten pretty good at crocheting without having to really pay attention to what I'm doing. I glance down every now and then to make sure things are going okay, but it doesn't take a whole lot of concentration. Knitting is much harder for me. Maybe it's the two needles thing that throws me off. Or maybe I just haven't done enough of it to get really good at it. But I love the way knitted fabric looks. So, earlier this year, I made the decision to get a knitting machine. I LOVE it. I make baby afghans for each new baby in our family, and it usually takes me a month or two to finish a crocheted baby blanket. With my knitting machine, I've made a queen size blanket in under a week. So far, I've done 1) a king size blanket for my bed, 2) a twin size blanket for my niece Beth, 3) a queen size blanket for my parents-in-law, and 4) a queen size blanket for my parents. (I'd share pictures, but I neglected to take pictures of any of them before giving them away). I've also done a few scarves. I'm now trying to get myself motivated to start an actual piece of clothing that I'll be able to wear - a sweater. I've already picked out the pattern and bought the yarn, but I'm nervous. What if I do all that work and it doesn't fit? So I'm trying to ease myself into the clothing making with smaller projects. For instance, this cute little strawberry hat (it would look cuter if I had someone to model it)
I also have a matching red baby sweater almost finished. I thought if I successfully made a baby sweater it might give me the confidence to get started on a full size one. :) So stay tuned. Maybe I'll have a new sweater to model on the blog pretty soon.