It’s been a rough Monday at my Grandma’s as our sweet little german shepherd Flak decided to bring a dead squirrel into the dining room.  I know – I feel bad even sharing, but I’m currently suffering from PTDSSD (post traumatic dead squirrel stress disorder).  It took 30 minutes of hysterical screaming and crying until my heroic uncle Chris was able to deal with the ‘situation.’  I’ve cloroxed and listerened everything/every dog but…. *shudder***

ANYWAYS…. back to what I planned on sharing today.

Since I have started knitting regularly again, I decided I wanted to make something special for my boyfriend’s new niece.  She’s only 4 months old, so the size of any project for her will be small and manageable.

I stumbled upon this adorable quilt on ravelry and decided it would be the most original and cute blanket for the new baby.  I plan on doing all shades of ivory, white, light pink etc…

Now I did have to pay for this pattern from ‘Tiny Owl Knits‘ and while I LOVE the finished product, her instructions were less than easy to understand.    Perhaps it’s because I am a pattern novice, but I had several other very experienced family knitters take a look at the process and they were all left stumped too.  I ended up spending Saturday evening well into the night trying to figure out just how the heck you start to knit this thing.  I googled ‘knitting in the round’ and read/watched almost every article/video and none of them remotely looked like this project until finally I found this video:

“knitting in the round straight” – the heavens opened up and I finally figured out just what the heck the pattern author meant.  Her pictures always showed the stitches divided onto 2 different double pointed needles, and it just never made sense.  With this video her pattern is now EASY.  Hmmm operator error I guess. ;P  So I ended up doing the technique just to practice and although I did alright (no missed stitches or wrong knits or purls), it is very tedious and incredibly time consuming.  I guess I should mention now that it will take HUNDREDS of these small pockets to make a blanket – at this rate my niece will be old enough to knit herself a blanket!!  Alas here is how far I got in 2 hours:

and here is the ‘pocket’:

Now I just have to practice increasing and decreasing like the pattern says.  I do love the idea so I really have no issue spending money for the pattern, I just wasn’t really sure how to start.  I’m going to use larger needles too on my second test run because I tend to start knitting way too tight on those itty bitty needles. I’ve thought of using larger yarn too – that could work since it will be softer and take WAY less time.

I’ll continue to update as I go along – In the mean time here is a dorky photo of me (like the bullet shirt? thanks Mike!) modeling by new two-toned cowl that I made last week. It came out perfect and I LOVE it.  Too bad there aren’t that many cold/chilly days left.