The swap tease

I promise I haven't been slacking off on the Crafty Daisies swap, just slacking off on posting about it. I've been inspired to try some beading, which turned out to be faster and easier than I thought.

For your first hint, I've gotten supplies and surprises from these stores:

Atomic Books
Atomic Pop
Lovely Yarns
Hometown Girl
Beadazzled
Plaza

Socks that rock

To maybe someday make the Space Invaders socks, I have to figure out how to make some simple socks. I think I'm on the right track with this tutorial, though it would have been smart of me to use a thicker yarn so I didn't have 64 stitches in each round. (Is it even called a round?)

To learn how to make the little guys, I plan on making a pattern for a Space Invaders scarf. If it works out, I'll share, but I don't know how to read a pattern, let alone make one, so it will probably just be all unofficial.

I also love these monkey socks (no monkeys on them).

Embrace your knitting mistakes

Let's say a scarf has 400 rows of 20 stitches each. That's 8,000 stitches. If you're a beginnner (like me), you're probably learning a new technique with each scarf. (My first scarf I learned how to just do a knit stitch. My second, I'm learning how to make stripes.) So it makes sense that by the time you get to your second 4,000 stitches, you will have figured out quite a bit about what works for you concerning your new technique. Who cares if you're not perfect from stitch one?

It's easy to think that if you struggle with your first row, you're going to struggle until the end of your project, so you better get that first row just right. But that's not true, and you'll drive yourself crazy and learn to hate knitting if you think that way.

Instead, remember that you're getting better -- and knitting is getting easier -- with every stitch. It's only supposed to be fun.