I did it!

I finished my first knitted "thing"!

And I'm very happy with it.

I'm almost ready to call myself a knitter!

 

Here it is. My first knitted "thing" is my Seeded Diamonds block. And I think she's BEAUTIFUL. It was quite the adventure... I knit a lot. Purled a lot. Swore a lot. But most importantly, I learned a lot. 

And I've already moved on to "Lattice"! MUCH easier to get the hang of. I'm sure this is partly due to the simplicity of the pattern, and partly due to my greater understanding of how this whole knitting thing works.

My poor, poor crochet hooks. They haven't seen any use (besides rescuing knitting stitches) in far too long. I think I could do with a craft that causes less eye strain than knitting has proven to do... maybe this weekend I'll crochet something.

In other news, Trev brought home a neat new insulator from work for our ever-growing collection.

 

This one is remarkably clear. And it's a unique shape. A neat find.

AND I got together with my brother last night and he gifted me with some Mexican vanilla extract that he bought while on vacation last week. So thoughtful!

And it's clear. Neat! And it smells SO so good. All the more reason to bake! I've been using up this artifical stuff that I got at a wedding shower* (guests brought a recipe and one ingredient from that recipe as part of their gifts - a big bottle of artificial vanilla was part of one of the gifts). I don't want to WASTE it. And I know for the multitude of cookies that I bake for Trev and I - though we are quite the connoisseurs by this point - we don't really notice, so I don't feel too guilty about it - though years of watching the Food Network make it hard to use it guilt-free...

Anyhoo, I digress. Enough about the guilt of not-top-of-the-line baking ingredients. More about my sloooowly becoming a knitter! Happy thoughts!

*We got married in 2008 and I bake a lot of cookies... It's a big bottle.