A few weeks ago, I met up with a friend to go to a local craft fair, and she purchased a wonderful, knitted nautilus, based on this Knitty.com pattern. It was really well done and looked pretty cute, and it got me thinking about my attitude towards knitting.

For awhile now, I’ve not really thought too highly of knitting, at least as a craft that I could personally do. I don’t have anything against knitting (or crocheting) in and of itself, but the various examples of knitting’s end result have just never been appealing to me, either aesthetically or practically speaking. Perhaps it’s due to memories of hideously colored afghans and horribly itchy sweaters from my childhood, but none of what I saw ever made me want to pick up a pair of needles and make my own.

After seeing the nautilus and remembering photos of knitted organs though, I felt like I had found an area of knitting that is more my style. Forget toilet paper cozies and foofy scarves, I want to make some guts and fossils! I figured that I could at least try my hand at knitting, and if I really didn’t like it, I could just move on to something else.

So, this afternoon I went to Beverly’s to look for supplies. I found a copy of Stitch ‘N Bitch, which has pretty good reviews online, and then picked out a few basic items, including needles and a cheap skein of fairly soft yarn.

After having spent a few hours reading through the book and trying to cast on and knit a bit, I can definitely say that knitting is harder than I thought. Or at least it takes a different sort of mindset than what I’m used to with embroidery or making cards. It’s funny because I was just reading Kristin Nicholas’ post about how some knitters seem to have a hang-up about embroidering; I seem to have the opposite problem!

Anyway, I got a bit frustrated earlier, after my stitches kept getting too tight and the book didn’t explain the casting on technique that would help this. I won’t give up just yet though, especially with how many web sites there seem to be about knitting. I’ll keep trying, and would appreciate any sort of tips or tricks from the experienced knitters out there!

I haven’t really been working on as many craft projects lately, thus the lack of posts over the past few weeks. I’m enrolled in a few art/design classes at a local community college, and the assignments for those have been taking up quite a bit of my time. Although the projects are more art than craft, they’re still creative things, so I thought I’d post a few photos of them.

 

 

These are all for my “color” class, and I’ve had a lot of fun working on them and learning more about color. We’ve been using gouache paint for the majority of the projects, and it’s been interesting, since I’m more used to using acrylics.

The graphic design class I’m taking though has been quite different from what I thought it would be like. I was especially looking forward to it, as I had really wanted to study graphic design in school, but it’s turned out to be less interesting to me. Perhaps that’s partly due to it being entirely online, so any sort of communication seems rather forced. I don’t think I’m doing too poorly in it, but I’m still not sure if it’s something I want to pursue further.

Other than that, I’ve been having fun with some new friends from the South Bay Craft Group, including a shopping trip and a craft party. This past weekend, a few of us went down to Santa Cruz to check out some thrift stores, as well as Hart’s Fabric, a really wonderful fabric store I happened to find the week before. We visited a very strange Goodwill store called Bargain Barn, and also stopped in at Bookshop Santa Cruz, which is probably the best bookstore I’ve found in this area.

The craft party was a lot of fun too, especially since I hadn’t been to one in awhile. The theme was altering t-shirts, based on the fairly recent book Generation T. I ended up making a pillow and started some embroidery on it, though I haven’t quite finished it yet. I was more into being social, and would love to organize a party of my own sometime. The last one I helped with was all about making decos (little booklets of collaged pages that are exchanged through the mail), but I don’t really work on them anymore. There are so many great new books out this year though, so I’m sure I can find something, as well as a new project to work on.