I signed up for a class to “learn how to professionally knit and finish your garments.” I haven’t had much of an inkling to knit a sweater yet, but it seems to be creeping up on me. There’s no way I’ll try it if I don’t know what I’m doing, so I thought if I learned some stuff about it, I’d feel more confident about my knitting. So for this class we are knitting a teddy bear sweater. I knit up a swatch:

but of course the gauge is wrong. I think it is standard for sweater knitting to knit more than one swatch, or at least change needle sizes. The blue is turning out nicely, don’t you think? I bought this yarn at Christmas on my first yarn binge in Chicago. I couldn’t really find anything to knit with it, so I think this will be a deserving project. I’ll have to go down a needle size, although I *really* wanted to use the size 7 Brittany needles I got on sale. The only size 6 needles I have are Denise needles which will have to do. I’ll put those thingies on the end of the cords to make them straight instead of circular. Nothing else I’ve made has really mattered how many stitches per inch it was. The hats I’ve made have ribbing for that extra stretch. The bags? Who cares, they’re either a little bigger or a little smaller. I don’t think I can mess this up anyway. It’s a teddy bear sweater. I don’t even have a stupid teddy bear to put it on. I figured I’d mail it to my niece. Maybe she has some doll or stuffed animal that it will fit. A wool sweater for a toy, kind of humorous. I wanted to use up yarn that I had rather than purchasing more. Oh, and I forgot to mention, I may be in over my head with this sweater knitting class finishing thing. We have to knit up the pieces of the teddy sweater BEFORE the class. And the instructor didn’t just give us a simple pattern. She gave us a pattern with like a gajillion notes attached to it. I may need some help executing this one. I’ll keep you posted.
In other news, I finished another Meema’s felted marsupial tote:

It’s for mom’s birthday. She should get the surprise in the mail today! I think I’m finished knitting these totes for awhile. They’re super cute, super easy, and super fast, especially using size 15 needles with two strands of worsted weight yarn. After making 3 though, they’re getting super old. Well, I shouldn’t say that. I do love making them for people because they seem to really like them (or so they say) and keep asking for them. Let’s just say I don’t want to knit anything on size 15 needles for awhile. They seem so clunky compared to smaller knitting.
Today we are leaving for a long weekend in Yosemite. Hoping to see some GREAT VIEWS (you may want to make sure the coast is clear before looking at this one at work- gotta love those Flickr searches).