one year.

Today is my one-year blogiversary. It's been a great time -- keeping a knitting blog has been even more fulfilling and more edifying than I thought it would be: it's kept me connected to other great knit-bloggers, and often it lit a fire under me when my interest or energy was flagging to know that I hadn't posted in a while. To everyone who has commented or knit one of my patterns, thank you so much! It makes me feel so great to hear from you all, and to see your wonderful work!

This has also been a year of firsts:
first adult sweater
first set-in sleeves
first original adult design
first experience with having other people knit my patterns (and here, here, here, and here)
first kool-aid dying
first figure-eight cast-on
first successful experience with customizing sizes
first reversible cable
first lesson in the necessity of swatching (and here)
first friends' baby! (and here, here, here, here, and here).
first year of my graduate program!

And, as seems entirely fitting, I begin my second year of blogging with a post about the same sweater with which I began my first year: the sheep yoke baby cardigan. I've been working on iteration #3 of this same sweater, perfecting the pattern and knitting up the girl's version so that knitters can see what they both look like. With a charted fair-isle pattern instead of verbal instructions, this has been my most successful original pattern, both in terms of people's seeming to want to knit it, and in terms of nobody's discovering any errata. Unfortunately, the one pregnant person I know is having a boy, so this will be one for the choir auction.


Here's to new year of blogging! And here's a nice little blogiversary (well, actually Christmas, but close enough) gift to end the post: does my Aunt know how to pick presents, or what? Super-fine tipped pens in a great spectrum of colors. Perfect for sketching out fair isle patterns!