Here's how I got started knitting. In 1983, I found patterns for holiday sweaters for kids in a women's magazine (Family Circle, I think.) I just had to make them for my niece and nephew, who were 4 and 1 1/2 at the time. While sweaters aren't necessarily the best projects for a a beginner, I kept at it. By that autumn, I'd finished them. Here I am, a twentysomething, holding those first knitted items.		Here are my niece and nephew wearing those sweaters for their annual holiday photos. Never mind that they're both southern California natives, where sweaters are sometimes needed but matching hats almost never. My sister Charlotte chose a snowy alpine background and turned the sunbelt babies into total posers.

There are some things that, once you do them, you can't go back. These pretty little sweaters got me started as a knitter, and I've been at it ever since. Over the years, I've knitted (and crocheted) many more items. I never kept good track of them, and sometimes it's hard to remember what I did when.

That's where this journal comes in. It's mainly for me to keep better track of when I start and finish projects. I also want to keep track of how well I like yarns, tools and patterns, and to record designs for which I write the patterns. I've organized it chronologically, a little differently from my quilting journal, which has subcategories by type of project. Knitting takes longer than quilting, and I'm more interested in the total time projects take than in the type of knitted item.

I particularly like knitting and designing prayer shawls, and I share these patterns freely on a separate site. Visit my prayer shawl page for these. Projects I'd finished before starting this journal are in my gallery of finished objects, or FO gallery.

Project Name	Dates	Thumbnail Photo
Lace Leaf Cravat	21 June - 18 July 2009
Myrtle Leaf Wrap	April 2008 - 11 Aug 2009
Maidenhair Shawl	Jan 2009 - in progress
Gaugain's Simple Lace Scarf	21 June 2009 - in progress
Soft Stripes Prayer Shawl	18 July 2009 - in progress
Purple Domino Cardigan	20 July 2009 - in progress

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