Happy New Year! Happy Warm Neck!

I have been stumbling a lot lately.  That's not to say I've been drinking heavily.... no, I'm addicted to stumble.com.  If you haven't checked it out yet, you need to, but prepare to form your own addiction.   Anyway, my husband bought me a Kindle Fire for Christmas and I have been stumbling everywhere... all the time lately.  I have found so many wonderful sites and fun things that I would have never found were it not for Stumble.  I ran across this amazing knitted scarf tutorial a few weeks back... you can find it here www.ezisus.blogspot.com/2008/12/lamar.html .  I am not an amazing knitter.  I have found that knitting requires me to pay attention to what I am doing and I find this really hard to do.  So I have never managed to knit anything beyond a straight scarf or something off my round knitting loom.... and that something always ends up being a cylindrical neck warmer, not all that exciting.  So anyway, when I found this tutorial I just knew I had to figure out a way to conquer my knitting demons and make it.   As it turns out, after I paid a little attention and used my noggin and started over about 9 times, it wasn't actually that challenging.

Managed to mess up yet again and had to start over.

Why did I have to start over so many times?  I will blame a couple of those times on an adorable 3 year old, a few on my husband... because hey, why not, and well the rest were either me not paying attention to the pattern or losing count in my rows.... this is a BIG one.   So I developed my own system for remembering what row I was on since I am no good at just figuring that out by looking at my work.  I have two small bowls of different colors and in one bowl I have 6 pieces of anything (I used Mike and Ikes and had to will myself not to eat them).  You can use rocks, dried beans, legos or whatever else is lying around the house.  Once I finish a row I take a candy from one bowl and put it in the other. Then when all my candies are in the other bowl I know its time to start my pattern over. 

High Tech... I know.

I did not end up making a scarf as the pattern calls for. Instead I turned mine into a cowl, by adding some buttons that I made out of polymer clay.

 It snowed all week here in the Seattle area so I was able to get this bad boy finished in 3 days for just a couple hours here and there.

The view from my knitting chair.

 I adore it!   It is so warm and soft.  My toddler now wants mommy to make her one ad I think I just might.