In a knitty mood

It is 80 degrees outside, and all I can think about is hats and scarves and finger-less gloves. It is too hot for me to be handling yarn, but I'm in a knitting mood nonetheless. I braved our stifling hot storage shed in the backyard yesterday to paw through my two containers of yarn for some project inspiration. It took great restraint to only bring in one skein because every yarn I saw gave me new ideas. I had to remind myself that all the yarn will still be there, so I don't have to clutter my bedroom with several projects' worth of yarn right now.

One thing that put me in this mood was running across the Knifty Knitter looms that ABM bought several years ago. I was resistant to using them back then because I was a little snobbish about being a "proper" needle knitter. Now I am more willing to embrace any tools that scratch that crafty itch and give me the results I want. There are a lot of Knifty Knitter projects that look way too bulky for my taste, but they aren't all like that. I completed a bottle cozy last week that I liked a lot:



This cozy is in Mars Hill Lions' colors, the football team at M's college. My goal is to make a few and have M sell them when she goes back to school in the fall. She is a pretty good salesperson; she sold five times as much band booster chocolate as her fellow band members. It may be a long shot, but at this point I am willing to try anything to give M some extra spending money. Most knitters are against crafting for money because they say that they can't sell the items for the amount that their time is really worth. That is true, but all I can think of is the long tradition of people doing whatever they can to pay the bills. Some people call that "getting your hustle on" and my needlework skills are the only thing I have to hustle right now.