I’ve start­ed some new projects that involve try­ing new things. One of these new things is knit­ting. It’s not that I’ve nev­er knit­ted before. On the con­trary, in my teenage years I’ve knit­ted sweaters with colour­work and cables and lace pat­terns. But some­where along the way I’ve put down knit­ting and spent all my time cro­chet­ing instead, and I’m sur­prised how much I’ve for­got­ten, how for­eign knit­ting has become to me. It feels like I need to relearn every­thing from the start.

I was look­ing for a cardi­gan pat­tern and tried sev­er­al cro­chet ones but end­ed up frog­ging all of them. I had been eying the Every­body Knows cardi­gan (so named because “every­body who can knit knows how to knit garter stitch”.) from Knit­ty for a few years now. I real­ly like the sim­plic­i­ty and the shape of it, and when I think about mak­ing a new cardi­gan that’s the cardi­gan I want to wear, oth­er cro­chet pat­terns just would­n’t do.

So I start­ed the project this week, it’s com­ing along slow­ly. Because I don’t usu­al­ly knit I don’t have a col­lec­tion of nee­dles like I have with hooks. The nee­dles I’m using were giv­en to me by some­one who no longer want­ed them. I’m not even sure what size they are, but they seem to match (size, not colour) and work well with the Shet­land Chunky I’m using. Actu­al­ly, the dif­fer­ent colour nee­dles help me fig­ure out the right side/wrong side. It just feels a lot slow­er than cro­chet­ing, but I’m deter­mined to com­plete it, hope­ful­ly in time for ear­ly spring.

Anoth­er new thing I’ve start­ed try­ing and learn­ing is play­ing the ukulele. I bought a rather inex­pen­sive (i.e. toy-grade) one yes­ter­day with the help of my broth­er-in-law, who knows a lot about music (thanks Dan!). I did­n’t want to invest too much in it because I’ve nev­er been very musi­cal and I don’t know whether I can keep it up, but I’d like to try any­way. Appar­ent­ly kinder­garten chil­dren learn ukulele at school nowa­days, so if a 4 year-old can do it, I should be able to do it too! I found a use­ful tool to tune it last night, and tried to learn a few chords. I don’t have a very good sense of rhythm, so I’m hav­ing trou­ble with the strum­ming, but I hope to get bet­ter with practice.

And for the year of the rab­bit I’m read­ing a new book, Water­ship Down by Richard Adams.

I’m still try­ing to get into the sto­ry, but it’s inter­est­ing so far. I love that it’s based on car ride sto­ries — tales that the author has made up and impro­vised and told to his chil­dren dur­ing long or short car rides.

And final­ly, some good news! A sale came through my Etsy shop today! Hur­ray! I’ve had a cou­ple of cus­tom orders through friends since the shop opened, but this is the first order that actu­al­ly came through the shop itself, from some­one I don’t know! So I sent the Chi­nese Greens on their way today to their new home, along with lots of bub­ble wrap in case of a bumpy ride and an origa­mi bird note­card for a sweet note that the Greens were asked to pass on.

Safe trav­els, my friends!

It’s a bit sad to see them go, but know­ing that they can make some­one else smile makes me happy.

The shop has been slow, and I have con­tem­plat­ed clos­ing it down, actu­al­ly. Hon­est­ly I haven’t real­ly done a lot to pro­mote it because, after all, I do enjoy shar­ing free pat­terns a lot more than try­ing to sell peo­ple things. But the first sale is a great encour­age­ment, and I will con­tin­ue to work on some ideas, and hope­ful­ly stock the shop with new things soon! :D

Thank you for vis­it­ing! Have a love­ly day!