Check it out. This is the very first thing I’ve knitted from a pattern. It’s a potholder! For such a simple-looking item, it was ridiculously complicated. I had to pull it apart and restart about ten times. (It didn’t help that whoever wrote the pattern was an idiot.) I’m pretty proud of it though. Now I’m on to bigger and better things. I used this great site (link courtesy of Megan) to generate a pattern for a striped Gryffindor scarf! If all goes well, some of you might even be getting these for Christmas this year! 🙂

Check out what I learned today – I can knit! Well, I can cast on and do a basic stitch anyway, thanks to the groovy book Ma Snook sent me. Now I’m itching to do more. I definitely need a new bag, and there are some extremely cute patterns available on the ‘Net. (I’m loving the first one and last one of those.) I also found some hats I might have to make for the folks back home for Christmas. These two look easy and stylish enough. And how cool would it be to make my sister a devil hat? She’d love that!

Thanks for everyone’s commiseration. The work disaster turned out to be not as bad as I anticipated. I still had to re-do everything, but it was easier the second time and I even improved it a bit. The biggest pick-me-up was provided by Mama Snook, who sent me some knitting needles, a ball of yarn, and a groovy kids’ book entitled “Fun With Wool.” As soon as I get the quilt done, it’s time to tackle knitting!