The gift that keeps on giving

I'm still not sure what's going to happen here with the blog.  The "bad" domain company's Contact Us button doesn't even work and supposedly my old domain name expires Jan. 14th but they keep sending me letters that it will be cut off on the 11th.   And since I vaguely remember having problems getting the original domain set up to coordinate the blog, Etsy and all my social media places, I'm afraid to try to change the domain by myself without my son's help.  And he's at work for 16 hours a day, every day for the next week.  How dare he have a real job (2 actually) that takes his attention when I need him!  😜

Anyway.... This post may or may not show up and it may or may not be the last for a while.  Time will tell.

And since I'm great at ignoring the things I don't want to think about/consider/do..., let's talk knitting.

One of my Christmas gifts was an Advent yarn pack and a pattern for a cowl or scarf.  I am SO excited over this gift.  I've always wanted an Advent yarn thing but I've never been able to justify the cost.  

Well, my friend, Dawne, made up the yarn packs from her stash and gifted them to the Winterfest group.  Winterfest being the time consuming machine that it was, we all decided to celebrate Yarn Advent in January.  And me being behind schedule as usual, started mine on January 4th.

Each packet of yarn is made up of 30 yards and is wrapped in a cotton quilting fabric square.  They look like hard Christmas candies in the bowl.  😊  And you know what that means, right?  When I finish knitting the advent yarn, I will have a whole new Advent quilting project to do.  It's the gift that keeps on giving!

Now, if someone would only gift me some quilting skills.  And an iron.  😛  I can't find my iron.  How do you loose an iron?  Okay, maybe the fact that I haven't touched the iron in over three years may have something to do with it.

So for the yarn portion, I chose the cowl design. The actual pattern is the Manic Panic Cowl which is such an awesome name!  The stitch pattern is the linen stitch and when I saw that, I almost tossed the whole thing in the trash.  No, not really.  Well, almost.  

See, years and years ago I attempted a linen stitch scarf... with DISASTEROUS results.  I wasn't a very experienced knitter back then and didn't know how to 'read' my knitting and well, take my word for it - it was ugly! 

I was not looking forward to another linen stitch attempt.  But, I was coming off the high of a very successful Winterfest and was still feeling a bit God-like and decided to give the stitch another try.

I'm so glad I did!  I'm also very glad I picked the cowl/infinity scarf rather than the flat scarf.  By knitting in the round, every row is the same and it's super simple and I'm loving the outcome.  Absolutely loving it!

I'm also loving the colors.  The yarns are very bright and Eastery/springy/summery.  They are not my normal scarf/winter knits colors but that's not a bad thing.  After all, who says I have to wear dark, dull colors in winter?  Besides, I'm really enjoying knitting the bright, sunny colors as I sit huddled under my blanket, looking out the window at the cold, gray, winter scenery.

And now, I'm off to knit 30 yards of majenta.