Fun Cold Weather Activity Time

I started knitting again this past weekend.  It's something that I learned about 4 years ago and fell in love with immediately.  However, I'd always fall in and out of it because I have this weird thing about only wanting to knit during the fall and winter.  There's something about knitting that just makes it a cool weather activity.  Holding skeins of yarn, no matter how lightweight it is, in 80 degree weather really just isn't appealing. 

I fell out of my knitting routine for a solid break about 2 years ago though.  At the time, I was working on knitting a blanket.  A simple project; yet one that would take some time, just due to the sheer size of it.  I had begun to make some progress on it, when I was given a blanket very similar to the one that I was knitting as a Christmas gift that year.  I couldn't bring myself to continue knitting the blanket, when there was a fully completed one just staring back at me, and I didn't want to go buy new yarn for a new project since I had just bought a ton of yarn for the blanket.   Needless to say, That was just enough to extinguish my knitting mojo for awhile.

But finally, this past weekend, I had the urge to head into the yarn store again.  Seth was away for the weekend, and I was enjoying some quality "me" time.  I had big plans for an evening of Indian takeout (Seth hates it), Netflix (had a movie Seth would never watch), and knitting.

Since it was an impulse decision to go into the yarn store, I didn't have a pattern or project in mind, so I decided to get started again with a simple scarf.  I know that I'm going to have to get a new coat this winter, as my regular coats will only fit me for so much longer, so I didn't have a base color to help me decide what type and color of yarn I should get. 

I ended up with a variegated wool with shades of dark grey, camel, burgundy, and light blue.  I loved the color variations and thought it would look good when it was knitted together.

I ended up not starting on Saturday evening, as I had planned, but instead I sat down on Sunday night and started to cast on the first stitches.  Before I started I wondered if I would really remember how to do everything, but it came back to me without a second thought.  Before I knew it, I was knitting away and wondering why I had stopped for so long. 

I love knitting because its something you can really do anywhere, at anytime.  The repetition of each stitch is very calming and has a wonderful cadence to it as it goes along.  With each completed row, you begin to see progress and see your project take shape, literally. 

Here's the scarf so far; I need to pick it up again tonight, but its moving along pretty well so far:

 

And here's one with my little knitting buddy, even though you can't see the details on the scarf as well in this picture: