So, Now I have a blog

I'm still not too sure exactly what a blog is, lol, but here goes.... My name is Char, I live in Alabama and I love knitting, and genealogy. My mother tried to teach me and my sisters to knit and crochet when we were very young. Being left handed, I presented quite a problem, but once I figured out for myself what the yarn was supposed to be doing, I got the hang of knitting, but, crochet was out of the question! I have tried to teach myself to crochet, but, I can never figure out where the row stops. lol! Everything I made had very wavy edges!! lol So, I stick to my knitting!! My sisters and I still laugh (and curse!) about how we'd take our little practice swatches to Mom, and she'd find mistakes and make us rip out all our hard work to fix it. Now, when we find a boo-boo several rows down, we try to tell ourselves that "Nobody will notice that", ah, but Mom's voice rings in our ears. We cannot ignore it, so we rip, laughing and cursing. Above is the Irish Fisherman Afghan, and pillow covers I made for my son. Its from a Columbia-Minerva leaflet #2625 called Heirloom Afghans copyright 1976. I made a few modifications though. I hate those "Popcorn Ball" stitches, and the second pattern was a row of them. (Please, no offense to those that like them, but, I think they're silly looking.) Anyway, I replaced them with the Baby Cross-cable Stitch from "The Complete Book of Knitting" by Barbara Abbey. It looks pretty good, doesn't it!! I made the pillow covers from another stitch pattern in Barbara Abbey's book, its called Cross-stitch block. Sunday, I found this pattern for Twining Trees http://www.knitting-and.com/knitting/patterns/afghans/twiningtrees.htm and I thought it was beautiful, I couldn't wait to try it. It was my very first time reading a chart! I thought my old eyes would fall out!! But, I muddled through it. The practice piece I made turned out so well, I made a pillow cover out of it!!! Neat, huh? I make pillow covers that can be slipped off and laundered, rather than sewn together, I do a couple of inches of K1, P1 ribbing, then about 8 inches of stockinette st, then a couple of rows of reverse stocknette stitch (this gives a nice fold edge) then I go into the pattern for the pillow front. When the pillow front pattern is done, I reverse the process, then sew the side seams with the back overlapped. See pictures below. I spent the Holidays in VA with my sister, and while I was there my niece and her husband asked me to knit them an afghan. So, they picked out a pattern, and bought the yarn and will be mailing it to me any time now. I'll keep you posted on how its going.

Well, for someone who's never blogged before I sure can go on and on. Let me know what you think!!