cahn

I have had this draft for a while and I guess I should post it??

Knitting:

-So, um, yeah, knitting. It's... really fun! I can see why everyone loves it. Now that I've actually got the rhythm of it (which I never did when I tried fifteen years back) I find it extremely soothing. Unfortunately it is really tough on my hands, rather more so than crochet -- I think partially because the motions tend to be a little smaller than crochet? but probably also because I am probably doing something weird with my posture when knitting that I need to fix. So anyway unless/until I can fix that, I have to keep knitting at a minimum.

-ugh it's such a pain to fix (or rip back) knitting mistakes! This is a bad combination with my short attention span, both in terms of making a ton of mistakes in general and in terms of wanting to play with learning to do new things with knitting which I then promptly mess up. In principle I know that I should be putting in lifelines everywhere. In practice, being a careless sort of person, I think maybe I just won't make anything right now where mistakes matter that much :P

Crocheting:

-I've got 15 out of 19 of the hexagons I was crocheting last time I talked about crocheting, and I have, err, 21 out of 100 squares done of the hue shift blanket I'm making for A. (Two of which were done during my parents' visit.) The hexagons will definitely get done because I love working on it so much; the hue shift blanket will take forever because it's much less fun -- partially because it's almost entirely single crochet back loop, which I have decided I'm not fond of, but mostly because for some reason I keep ending up with one too many or one too few stitches, so I have to count every single row until near the end of the square (ugh) and even with counting I still end up wrong and I've had to rip back substantial work in most of the squares at this point. (why so hard?? idk why I can't do it right!) For a while I was seriously thinking it might actually be quicker to knit the whole thing, except for that annoying bit about it being harder on my hands. But every time I finish a square I'm pleased by how it's coming along, so there's that.

-But I took a substantial break from both of those to work on baby blankets -- two of my friends are having babies. One of them it was going to be really convenient if I could finish by the time school starts, so I was focusing mostly on that. (The other mother isn't due until Christmas, so I feel like I have more time for that one :) )

random thoughts on blankets and yarn:

-...Mostly this whole baby-blanket thing is convincing me that

thistleingrey is right that it's a good idea to gift hats rather than blankets. :P Blankets take a long time and I haven't got the hang of what I need to think about when selecting a pattern and yarn, so the one blanket ended up kind of small and the other one will be super duper heavy, whoops.

-One of the blankets (the small one I just finished) I made with some gradient cotton-acrylic yarn (fingering-weight) I bought on a whim because it was so pretty -- this is the first time I've crocheted with even partial cotton and, as thistleingrey warned me, it is quite hard on my hands. I made it to the end of the blanket, but I guess it's good to know I should not be getting a whole lot of this yarn in the future :P (it's so pretty though!)

-My late mother-in-law knitted blankets (fairly large blankets, too! significantly larger than either of my baby blankets are going to be) for each of her grandkids when they were born, and while I knew it was a labor of love before, I have a whole new appreciation for it now that I know how to knit <3 I wish I could tell her that! A. and I call his a "blanket hug."

-as

mildred_of_midgard warned, so it has come to pass: I've started looking around and getting more interested in more expensive fancier yarn :P But, perhaps fortunately for my pocketbook, I can't buy any of it yet because I have all these other projects to do first! (And while I am totally up for starting another new project -- see also very short attention span -- we don't have any more room for yarn until I use some of this up :P
~~unless I throw out some of the kids toys~~
~~which honestly probably needs to be done anyway~~)

(but, like, if you have recs for yarn that's, oh, I'm mostly looking in the $10-$15/100g region, but let's say below $25/100g, especially fingering-weight, I'm not saying I wouldn't ~~maybe sneak out some toys and buy some anyway~~ be interested)