My first sweater!!!!

Not what you expected? Oh c'mon, it's so cute, how does it not count? It took me a whole 2 hours to do (while watching tv).
So what we can deduce from this is

• It is an ornament for Christmas presents
• I in no way followed my plan from last night
• The knitpicks order finally came.
  
• No postmen were hurting in the making of this post.
• All of the above

I got the free pattern from here, there are several cute patterns on this site. I like this one especially because it was knit flat and not on dpns. I'm sure something like this would be a good starter project for using dpns, but I'm more interested in speed and results right now than learning something new. I will get to dpns later.

This little guy hasn't been seemed yet, but I'll get to that later. Here is a picture of how it comes off the needles. Kind of cool. Just cast on some stitches in the midle to make sleeves. Bind off a few in the middle of that for the neckhole, finish it off and then slap it together. Totally easy. See, I can follow a pattern. The only thing I forgot to do was to do little garter stitch cuffs, but I'll do that on the next one. It looks fine either way.

I plan to also do the wreath pattern that's on that knitting patterns web site. That's even easier, so sign me up. I'm making little baskets for people so these can go in there. I was going to buy some ornaments for the baskets, but this is way better. I'm thrilled. I am also easily amused.

Moving on. I forgot that I hadn't posted a picture of the bags that I made from the picture that I posted earlier. So here it is.


The left one is completely finished. It's hard to see but it has a little crochet chain tie on it to keep it closed. I'll probably embroider little snowflakes on this one and the one on the right. The middle one is busy enough as it is. The two on the right just need to be seemed and have closures made. The one on the right is a little Dr. Seuss or Where's Waldo as opposed to Christmas, but I'm hoping some embellishment will fix that. And hey, even if I don't give it away, at least I figured out how to stripe.

So you see, between making the little sweaters, these bags, and the wreaths, I'm going to have a lot of sewing to do. Which I'm pretty quick at. I'm not extremely fond of it, but I figured I should just do it all at once. That way I don't have to keep dragging out the needles for ten seconds worth of stitching. Plus it's something that I can do when I'm totally distracted. Which is most of the time. I need to save my moments of focus for actual knitting.

And so today, I leave you with two things. First a picture of a puppy completely (and adorably) saddened by her lack of dry land:

She couldn't be anymore desperate to get out of the tub. She was thoroughly pathetic. To be sure there is no water dog in this dog. And no retreiver, but that's another story.


And here is a much happier puppy