Tangled Grrl

I posted a few days ago about the wonderful box of goodies my godmother brought me. Last night I decided I needed to cast on a new project. But first I needed to wind yarn. I have a yarn winder, but I don't have a swift. While the boyfriend is good at helping me be creative enough to use my winder without a swift, he's a bit ADD and it ends up becoming a Tangled mess. So last night I decide to try out the The Handy Adjustable Yarn Skein Winder in place of a swift. My mechanic boyfriend has a box of all types of bolts and screws and miscellaneous hardware, so he found a screw that would work. And I got to use it and wind my yarn without any Tangles at all!!! It's my new favorite thing and I had to stop myself from winding all of my yarn just because I could.    

Knitting lace intimidated me. A lot. So I decided to jump in headfirst when the only patterns that looked interesting were lacy. I knit a leaf lace shawl that I had to frog at least five times before I made it past row 5. Then I would make it to row 10, not be able to figure out my mistake, not have a life line and not be able to read my knitting well enough yet to figure out how to fix it, so I frogged it at least 15 times. I'm really good at garter tabs now since I couldn't figure out how to frog back and pick up where I was still getting the right stitch count. Every time I frogged, I frogged the ENTIRE thing. By the time I reached the end of my shawl, it was 2 am and I was doing a new bind off. I couldn't leave it until the morning because I absolutely had to finish it. So I did what any sane knitter does and stayed up, bleary eyed and sleep deprived and finished binding off. It was fabulous and I completed the thing in almost exactly one week. I was that determined. ...