Welcome!

Hello!  This is my new blog.  I’ve got another one (http://www.Writing.Com/authors/ariella24/blog) that I use for recording my main life (as in, everything that doesn’t have to do with knitting and writing, though lately that stuff’s been sneaking in too).  This blog is going to be (I hope) exclusively for my knitting and writing exploits.

So, I suppose if I’m going to write about that stuff here, you’ll want to know a little about me first.  I’m a college student (currently a sophomore)–an Elementary Education major.  I love kids and teaching, but not quite as much as I love knitting and writing.  I’m sticking with my major though because you can’t major in knitting (that would be weird!) and I’m kind of struggling with writer’s block so being a Writing major would be even more of a struggle than El Ed is right now.  Anyways, now you’ve heard a bit about me, it’s time to meet so more important “people”–my characters and my knitting.

Characters first:

These two goofballs are Ariella Churchill and James Cabbot.  (My little sister made the dolls for the record; she’s really good at that!)  They appeared out of nowhere in 9th grade and have been plaguing me ever since.  At first their story was a retelling of “Cinderella” but it’s changed so much over the years that we’re not really sure what it is anymore.  Currently the story is that Ariella is the daughter of a wealthy lord  and James is a prince (again; his family’s social status has changed more than Ariella’s has over the years; he’s been everything from a prince to a gardener’s assistant, poor boy.)  Somehow, Ariella is forced to leave her home in disguise and get a job as a scullery maid at the palace, where she meets James and his haughty older brother, Arnold.  I think it’s still going to be like Cinderella, but with a twist.  If I ever get anything written on it, I’ll post about it in delight.  In the meantime, I’m still working on it.  I am thinking that their story will likely be a short story instead of a novel, as we’ve been planning this entire time; we’ve tried a novel and it hasn’t worked at all.  One thing I may try is telling their story out loud to someone.  It’s worked for the next character.

Meet Charlotte Morris, the heroine of my “Beauty and the Beast” retelling.  Her story actually has a title–“The Glass Rose”–and it’s working out better than James and Ariella’s has been.  That’s probably because Charlotte and her true love, Patrick (who will not appear here because I don’t have a picture and because he’s supposed to be mysterious) are much more cooperative than the Terrible Two.  Also, they don’t change their minds about what happens in their story and what their backstories are every five minutes.  Their story is one of the few I’ve managed to tell out loud successfully to more than one group of people.  I’ve told it to six to eight year olds, who were amazed, and to some college freshmen, who were also amazed.  Now if only I could get the same amazing story down on paper…

There are more, but none of them want to come out right now and these three (four if you count Patrick) are the main characters of the two main stories I’m working on at the moment.  Neither of them is going very well (as in, I haven’t written anything on either of them for a while now) but they’re on my to do list.  Now it’s time to meet some other friends of mine:  my knitting projects. (By the way, you won’t be seeing my face in any of these pictures; the knitting always gets in the way somehow…)

Meet the Kindergarten Blanket (model 1).  This project is the first one I’ve tried to knit for a class.  I’m taking a Child’s Response to Lit class this semester and one of our big projects involves going to a nearby elementary school to read to a kindergartener.  We have to sit on the floor, so our professor wants us to make a little blanket or floor mat for the kid to sit on while we read, something we can give them at Christmas as a present.  I think most people are going to be making fleece blankets, but I’m taking the hard route and knitting a baby blanket sized thing.  It’s made out of (mostly) Lion Brand Wool-Ease Thick&Quick yarn.  The stripe on top there is made out of some sort of blue fluff; I can’t remember the brand name, unfortunately.  I’m going to add another stripe in the Wool-Ease Thick&Quick Wheat yarn (it’s like the cream there but it has rayon stuff in it) and then the pattern will go backwards and end again with the sky blue stripe there at the bottom.  I worked it out that if I knit two stripes a day I’ll finish by this coming Tuesday, which is the day we’re going to the elementary school for the first time.  Wish me luck!

This sad looking thing is my first ever knitted and stuffed bunny.  He only has one ear, poor thing, and he’s very fat, but if I manage to finish the Kindergarten blanket, I’ll knit him another ear and pack him off to someone.  I’m having trouble deciding if he should go to my little brother whose birthday is tomorrow or my friend Robyn, whose birthday was on the 3rd.  I’m thinking it’ll go to David, though how I’ll get it to him I don’t know.

Meet the Blue Shawl.  It’s not very far along, but it’ll look better once I knit more on it (which I’ll do once I finish my two stripes for the KB today).  The yarn for it is a “Pound of Love” from Lion Brand.  I originally wrapped it into four balls of one strand each but then I rerolled it into two big balls and one smaller one of four strands each.  It’s thick enough that I’m knitting it on size 13 US needles.  I’ve never made a shawl before, but I’m eager to see how this one turns out.  I’m not really using a pattern.  I can’t purl yet so everything I make is in garter stitch and other than the stitch and how many stitches to cast one (45 for this one) there’s not much else you need.  Now I’m just going to knit until it’s long enough.  I think when it’s done, I’ll add fringe, something else I’ve never tried before.  We’ll see how that turns out.

This ball of purple fluff will, eventually, become a pair of socks for my friend Robyn.  The orangy thing with all the pins in it is the label I’ve put on it, so I don’t use the yarn for something else by accident.   It needs that many pins to hold it on too; I tried using just one and the thing fell right off.  Turns out that sticky notes fail to stick to yarn.  Oh well.

Right now this doesn’t look like socks at all, and if you’re a knitter I bet you’re saying, “How is she going to knit that into socks?  It’s not sock yarn and she said she can’t purl!”  Well, I have a secret:  the Knifty Knitter looms.  They’re amazing things and if you haven’t tried them, you should, even if you know how to knit and do all sorts of fancy things like cables and lace and Fair Isle.  They let you knit in the round without having to learn how to use circular needles (I tried those but got so frustrated because my yarn got stuck on them that I cut mine in half and threw it away) or double-pointed needles (which I haven’t tried yet).  You can also knit flat pieces on them.  Remind me to post a picture of my first blanket, which was made almost exclusively on knitting looms.

Anyways, you use the smallest round loom, the blue one, to make socks.  I found a pattern online and already made myself a pair in Wool-Ease Thick&Quick of a purply sort of color.  I’ve gotten a request from my friend Jeni to make her a pair too, but we need to get to Wal-Mart to find yarn for them first.  Robyn liked this yarn, so it will be her socks.  Unfortunately, until I finish the KB, I’m not going to start on these.

This is going to be a scarf for my sister for her birthday at the end of the month.  She came to visit me and we went to JoAnn’s Fabrics and found this beautiful yarn.  It’s called Angel Hair and it’s very, very soft.  It feels like what I imagine cashmere would be like (I’m too scared of accidentally shrinking something to buy natural fibers; I’m so forgetful that I would wash something made of wool or cotton or cashmere or something and shrink it into oblivion) but it’s 100% acrylic.  It’s apparently a JoAnn’s exclusive.

The only problem with this yarn is that it sticks to my fingers.  I’m not sure why, but it’s at once slippery and sticky.  That makes it kind of hard to work with, plus it’s so soft and fuzzy that I make everyone I meet pet it.  I think people around here think I’m nuts…

This is the last piece of knitting I’m going to show you, I promise.  This is my super-long-term project, the one I work on whenever I don’t have anything else to knit.  It’s going to be a blanket for me.  I’m knitting it out of some very nice baby yarn, with three strands held together.  It looks kind of weird at the moment because none of the pieces are the same size.  There’s a really big piece there and then another one next to it that’s covered by my hand, and nine tiny squares under it that I made before I realized how many I’d have to knit and sew together to make a decent-sized blanket and one skinny strip that I made to make the bottom part and the top part the same width.  I’m sorry for the run-on sentence there.  Anyways, I’m making this to replace my baby blanket.  Blankie 1 has been with me since I was a baby and was my constant companion as a child.  It got rather ragged but I was determined to bring it with me to college last year.  I’d always said it would come with me and it did.  Then I learned to knit (only on looms last year; I learned to use needles just this summer) and decided to sew Blankie 1 into it.  The first blanket is now complete, but I wanted another blanket to replace Blankie 1.  Hence, Blankie 2 came into being.  I don’t know when I’ll finish it, since I’ve got all those projects up there and I might have to make another Kindergarten Blanket if I have to read to two kindergarteners, plus I’ll have Christmas presents to work on soon…But I will finish Blankie 2 eventually.

And now this blog entry has gone on entirely too long, so I’ll stop it.  Toodles!