I've known how to knit and purl for about 15 years, but I've never taken the time to get anymore in depth than that. My great-grandmother "Nana" used to knit alot and made things for my mom and her siblings growing up. She made afghans for them all as children and made one for my parents when they got married and then another one for them for Christmas one year. We regularly use these afghans in the winter and everyone wants to sneak one up to their bed. I'm the 3rd great-grandchild and my two older cousins were both old enough when she was still alive to have a twin sized afghan made for them. My mom's cousin's two children also got afghans. However, they used them as children and (gasp) didn't want them anymore once they'd grown up! So on Christmas in 2009 my grandmother gave these two afghans to myself and my next youngest cousin who were just babies when Nana died. At the time we were all lamenting how there was no one to carry on the tradition and someone needed to step up to the plate and start knitting afghans for the family.
One of the hallmarks of Nana afghans is that she used cables alot and they are all strips sewn together with fringes. She didn't make squares or these "quick stitch" throws with two strands of yarn and large needles. So I felt that in order to live up to the standard at all I had to learn cabling.
This November my cousin got married, so for Christmas I knitted her and her new husband an afghan. It's pretty small, only about 3'x5', but I didn't want to take on anything too big and daunting for my first try.
It has three different patterns. A simple seed stitch diamond pattern and then a more elaborate criss-cross cable in the middle. The original intention was to make three panels of the criss-cross however once I made the first one it seemed like too much to have three. So I made this little cabled diamond to match the seed stitch for the outer panels. Afterwards I wished that I had added a twist in between the diamonds instead of just crossing them.
I apologize for the horrendous picture. I forgot/didn't have time to take one before I wrapped it so I had to snap one really quickly on Christmas in the poor indoor/nighttime lighting while people were looking at it.
It was a huge success on Christmas and now I've been knitting non-stop since then. I've been learning all kinds of new things. I'm trying not to start too many things at once so I don't get bogged down and then stop leaving a bunch of UFO's on the needles which will never be finished. I've found, however, that if I have 2-3 items going at once then if I'm bored of one I'll just pick up the other one for a day or two and I won't be tempted to stash it away in the depths of my closet.
I've also found and been sucked into the never ending vortex that is Ravelry. So that ought to keep my knitting bug alive.
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