My secret little hobby: knitting

Wow, it all comes out on the blog in the end, doesn't it? I have a confession: I'm a knitter.

For those of you who are knitters, you'll perhaps understand why this is a confession. What's with the old lady stigma with knitting? Right?

And those of you who aren't knitters, quit perpetuating the only old ladies knit stereotype. You're just jealous I have a pretty awesome hobby and you don't.

For the past year, I was hard at work on two very special projects. I couldn't talk about them here, well, because, then they wouldn't be secrets. But now that both of the packages have been signed, sealed and delivered, I suppose it's safe to finally talk about it!

In addition to renovating a house, working full-time and doing my MBA part-time, I was knitting two big, big, big blankets for two very dear girlfriends: Whitney and Julie.

The blankets were both a very, very simple basketweave stitch. Since most of this project was up/down, on/off, for many months, I didn't want something too difficult to keep track of. Unfortunately, I didn't ever take the final measurements, but they must have been at least 5' x 7'? I did, however, work up the number of stitches for one of the blankets, and well, it was at least 60,000 stitches.

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I used this pattern book. Basketweave is the white blanket; second from the bottom.

The first blanket was for Whitney and Nate to celebrate their wedding. The color was a no-brainer: a lovely purple/eggplant for TCU. (Go Frogs! Well, and we both love that color.) I gave it to Whitney the morning of her wedding and I found her the next morning wrapped up in it nursing a killer hangover. I imagine that won't be the first or last time that blanket provides a little hangover TLC.

Stupidly, though, I didn't take any pictures of the blanket before I gave it to her. Makes for an excellent blog entry.

The second blanket was for Julie and Paul for Christmas. A few years ago, my mom knit Julie some fingerless gloves, and I remember very vividly her near tears at the homemade present. She still wears them to this day too. If you know Julie IRL, you know her personality is bold, outgoing and wild, so I wanted her blanket to match. This blanket was a striped combination of royal blue, mustard yellow, soft beige, camouflage green and burnt orange. A little loud for some people, but perfect for her.

And no surprise here, I didn't take a picture of this blanket before I shipped it across the world to Australia. Luckily, I woke up one morning to several text and facebook messages, including this picture.

Last month, I whipped up two beautiful cowls for Marie and Lindsey. Again, no pictures (must.remember.pictures.) but Marie had hers on in this little friendly pic from our girls weekend:

Of course, I have a few other projects keeping my fingers busy these days, but they're also surprises, so you'll have to wait until they're finished to hear more. I promise to take more pictures this time (blogger fail 101) and if they are any other knitters out there, let's chat!