To feed my creative spirit, I decided to expand my crafty skill set by taking a Knitting 101 class through Stitch DC in September (another Groupon, of course).  In the class, the focus was to teach the two main knitting stitches: the knit and the purl.  With these two stitches in your pocket, you can pretty much cover a wide spectrum of knitted projects, but the specific results of our efforts in this class were a scarf and a beanie hat!

Check out my chunky (garter stitch) scarf - Wildcat colors of course!!!  Wish the weather was colder for next weekend's homecoming football game.



And my beanie hat, as modeled by a very annoyed dog.  This was a hard project because of the tiny stitches on a circular needle, and what you see here is my second attempt, after ripping it completely apart halfway through the first round because I messed up my colors.


Inspired after the class was done, I put my brain and number pattern recognition skills to the test to make a waffle weave scarf for my friend:


 So what's next?  I'm planning on taking more classes at a really neat little store in Old Town Alexandria - Fibre Space (such a cute name!):  Intro to Cabling, Intro to Lace, and Knitting Techniques to help me when I screw up by adding or skipping stitches, which I tend to do often!  While I may grow tired of the time it takes to complete and the cost of the yarn for just one, relatively simple project -- oh I had many thoughts about going to Target for a $5 beanie and bringing it to class as my own -- I think I have a few more scarves left in me before I move on to learning another new skill.  I just love the challenge of improving and exploring new talents and creating beautiful things where people ask "You MADE that?" and I get to say "Yep!"