Crafts, leisure and happiness

Trail Originally uploaded by vin E Who would have guessed that on Thanks Giving day, the Bailey Cove trail near Redding, CA would be deserted. It was mere luck that led my husband and me there when we were looking for something to do. The changing coldth (I refuse to use the spell check suggested word here) and warmth of the trail gave us a perspective of the sun's hide and seek with the sides of the mountains. The silence interrupted only by the tread of our shoes on the thick carpet of leaves and our controlled whispers of awe. The smells were green and brown. The colors, damp and dry. A chirp, here, a glimpse of a deer sprinting away, there. The afternoon sun reflecting against the now reduced waters of the gigantic lake Shasta. The fallen acorns, some of which now adorn the petri dish in my living room. It was indeed a thankful Thanksgiving.

I've always been interested in craft work, probably because my mom would enroll me in different courses during summers. I never had the time or the resources earlier to pursue this interest until I moved to the US and found I had a lot of weekends and evenings on my hands. So I started to knit. This post is for anyone who has always wanted to knit and did not know how to go about starting it. This is what I did and I hope it helps Pick your project. Pick an easy or intermediate project Pick one where the size of the finished project need not be accurate for it to be usable. For instance a sweater or cardigan may not be a good idea, but a blanket or scarf or bib might be. Pick your project from one of the many available projects online. I picked my project from http://www.michaels.com/ . This was a baby blanket and it involved knitting the same pattern over and over again. Click here for instructions . Pick something that does not involve more than one color. Joining new colored yar