Knitting patterns

Along with all the other demands on my time this fall, I'm still knitting. Karen's generous gift of a large box of yarn has given me a lot of room to play. So far I'm still learning things by repeating the scarf pattern I was first playing with. I've changed up my needle size and yarn type, but other than that I've been pounding the same road. I've also learnt how to put a fringe on these projects.



I'm now well into another one done in a deep burgundy yarn. The yarn dye is staining my needles. This doesn't bode well for my motivation. I may well bail out and head into some wool at long last.

I'm still looking for ideas and trying to learn to read patterns. I found a decent archive of free patterns here:
http://www.knittingpatterncentral.com/directoryS

I've been monitoring this help forum:
http://www.knittinghelp.com/forum/

I still can't read a pattern with any hope of getting through even the simplest ones without coming across terms I'm not familiar with.

My current dream project:
Knitting Pure and Simple pattern #991

Yesterday I noticed that small breaks during the day, taken to clobber out another half dozen rows, was becoming less interesting. It's taken 6 meters of knitting to slack my thirst a bit. I smell a new project on the horizon. The last big hurdle was the casting on. My most recent try really came away very well. There is a lot of similarity between tying knots and knitting. I finally had the light go on with that a bit more and was able to tie up the casting on in a very regular fashion.

When I began, my mentors repeated the importance of "seeing the knitting," so one knows how it works and thus how to trouble shoot the inevitable errors that show up. Heaven only knows how many rows I've ripped out in the past month. Some days it has been challenging to make par.

I hear a wood pile calling my name. To the bush I go. The forest is rich in the smells of fall, but soon that will be gone so I'll take it while I can.