a party and a baby

I finished the baby sweater for the lady down the hall...I really like this pattern - it's neat how all the parts come together...and it involves very little sewing. Woo hoo! I'd make it again, except perhaps not with so much garter stitch... I even wasn't too put off when I realized I was 75% with one half of one sleeve, but it was pointing the wrong way! Didn't take very long at all to get back to where I had messed up.

This past Sunday was My Knitting Party, and I'm embarrassed to say that I have zero pictures of it. ...Hm. But truly, a gaggle of ladies did show up to my apartment, where they were all greeted with the welcoming smell of mulled cider - thanks to my awesome friend Jen (who also cleaned my kitchen...) and her Wonderful New England Ways - and a little somethin-somethin in a bag. As a knitter (or maybe just as myself), I have found that you can never have too many bags in which to put projects and stuff and yarn that will someday be a project. So, everyone got a little bag stuffed with some practice yarn, some fun yarn to make a scarf or something like that, a pair of needles, and half a tree's worth of papers I put together with resources for knitting help, books, magazines, stores, and free patterns.

During the party we made stitch markers (can I just say THANK YOU to Target, who just happened to have not only those cute bags, but also tons of fun beads in their dollar section when I dropped in on Friday. Yeah, Friday... ...I don't plan ahead quite as much as I should.) with the help of needle-nosed pliers and those little rings you use to make wine glass charms that you can buy in the wedding section of Michaels or JoAnn (in case you want to give it a shot yourself. I for one am very glad that I have extra rings! I seriously did not know that this craft would be so fun)...and we (I think) learned how to cast on and do the knit stitch...and we played games that had to do with knitting. I had hoped to get everyone capable of casting on, knitting, purling, binding off, and reading a pattern, but as usual my plan involved way too many things for one afternoon...so I guess I'll have to have Knitting Party Part II!!

I must say that my favorite part of the whole thing (other than the cider) was the cookie cake that my coworkers brought, on which they'd had written:

Happy Knitting