Welcome to the insanity

Hello and Welcome.

I was inspired by my friend Nic to create a knitting focused blog in an attempts to keep track of the various projects that I work on throughout the year, thus keeping my live journal relatively uncluttered from such.

About me:
I first learned how to knit from my Grandma (dad's mom). She also taught me needlepoint, embroidery, crewel, paint by numbers, quilting, counted cross stitch and crochet. She was my first fiber enabeler and I still have many of the needles that I lifted from her stash in her sewing room. The great thing is my grandmother taught my dad (her son) how to knit, sew, embroider, crochet, etc so whenever I got stuck I could always go to him for help. I always thought that was cool. I don't think he could knit something today to save his life, but he may surprise me. My mother's friend tried to teach her how to knit when she was recovering from breaking her back (1964). She never got the concept of "tension" and proceeded to create something that would hold water. Sitting and working on stuff was never mom's forte, too hard on her back and neck so she was never much for crafty things.

I consider my fiber addiction to be relatively mild. I do not have a room full of yarn, but I do not object to the idea. Most of my yarn stash fits in a standard tote/ drawer in my sewing room. I have been knitting since the age of five and I have lost count to the number of sweaters (adult and child), hats, mittens, socks and various other items I have completed over the years. When I buy yarn it is usually for a specific project that I will complete right away so I tend to not have a lot of yarn lying about calling to me.

I will admit that my knitting was fairly infrequent after leaving college and grad school, too many other hobbies taking my time. I would say that it wasn't until the last couple of years that the call of my needles overtook me. Now I seem to be working backwards, or from the ends in. Hats were the big thing, then socks, then mittens and now I'm making myself a new sweater in I don't know how many years (I don't count the mohair sweater that I took apart and re-worked 3 years ago as a new sweater, per se).

I don't consider myself a knitting expert, there are many techniques that I am still learning, the most recent would be fairisle. Many things I 'just do' because I figured out how to do them on my own or just guessed and may or may not be the accepted 'textbook' method. My thought is: if it works just fine and looks good then whos to say it's wrong.

I'm looking forward to seeing what I can accomplish in a year.