It started with a half a hat.....

About a year ago, my friend, Leah, was knitting all these beautiful hats and sweaters! I thought it was amazing how great they came out and I was interested in learning how! I couldn't believe that I was considering knitting! Anyways, she taught me the basics one night at her house and gave me a pattern to follow to make a hat. I was diligent for a few weeks, but eventually felt tired of knitting and purling over and over, and the fact that I wasn't able to visualize my final product. Needless to say, the hat, needles and yarn sat in a box until this past November.

Ronnie and I live in the town area of Warner, so there are some (okay, only one, that actually has recently closed...) shops that we can visit. We decided to take a gander when Warner had a "buy local" day. This shop had loads of kids toys, stamps, stationary, books and beads. My eye was caught by a knitted stuffed animals books and I decided at that moment that I was going to learn to make those! I got Ronnie's attention and proceeded to (sarcastically) encourage me to "go for it." He decided he would buy the books for me as a Christmas present, but that I couldn't look at them or practice until after I opened them. The next step was to obviously text Leah and tell her my new endeavor. She was more encouraging but also more realistic about the difficulty of the stuffed animals. DON'T CHALLENGE ME!

The first animal I finished was this elephant! My mother-in-law had a secret talent of knitting that I didn't discover until I started myself! From this point on, I couldn't stop myself! Of course, it helped to find out that my friend, Leah, was having a baby and I had the perfect opportunity to put my practice to good use! That's how I learned the other important techniques of knitting in order to complete the small safari in the picture above! I have now become addicted and would love to try to sell some of the animals eventually! Until then, this will be one of my hobbies while Ronnie is busy making liquid gold!