Leslie Suzanne: My First Knitting Project

Back in the day my Grandma was a very lucky lady. She could enter a contest and would almost always win. I remember wishing she would play the lottery when that came around. I thought maybe someday down the line I'd get some of that money...but Grandma never played the lottery, so I don't know how lucky she could have been.

<I'm taking a break today from my regularly scheduled dish-cloth to discuss my first knitting project as part of a contest offered from Knitting Daily. >

Back in early June 2011, at the Thornton Thimbler's Quilt bee, my Aunt Betty and I were talking about how I had never been able to learn to knit. I had tried, and failed, several times. I wanted to learn, but I just wasn't having any luck. I anticipated being on the road a lot that year and needed projects that I could bring with me, small portable things, that I could pick up and put down, that the bumping of the road wouldn't bother me and that I could have, at the end, a practical, usable, or wearable object. Knitting seemed perfect, but I'm telling you, I was all thumbs. I would get terribly tense and the end result was a very frustrated and aggravated me and some very tortured yarn.

I don't know why I gave it one more try. Especially after that conversation with Aunt Betty, but I did. And it was like magic. Something "turned on" for me and the whole process made sense and in the end I had a very practical (and too big) hat. I made it on Addi Turbo circulars using Fabulous Felines yarn from Yarn Market.com, and on June 25, 2011, I finished it and wanted to wear it to work even though it was 100 degrees outside.

I credit the Addi needles for my success. The way my hands want to hold the needles and the yarn, I need something shorter than your standard straights. I wasn't clumsy using a circular and the whole process of knitting this little hat felt exactly right.

I was hooked. I worked on my skills, knitted and knitted and knitted until it became what I do. In the 2.5 years that I've been knitting I can't count the number of projects I've completed. I have 68 projects on my Ravelry page, but I've done many more that for some reason I didn't put on there.

Sadly, the fate of that hat was to be ripped out. I admitted it this summer...it was too big and while it was my first project, this WAS knitting and one of the beauties of knitting is that I can reuse the yarn for something else. I wanted to make a monster to be like my calico kitty, so I ripped, reknit and ended up with this.