Natalie Knits

Oh, so much to post about, and so little time to post. I made SO MANY presents for the holidays, and haven't blogged about one! The more projects I made, the more intimidating it bacame to photograph and describe them. I need to be better about this-- I get so excited about a project and want to share, but instead of blogging about it, I work on it, and when it's done I am ready to move on. My solution: just do one at a time. And hopefully I'll get them all on here soon!

For my little sis, I made a rug for her room:

I used left over fabric and recycled clothes that I cut into strips. I would knot the ends together and I liked the effect of the knots. I also was originally going for the "mitered square" look and was going to make larger squares and join them together, but I didn't want to follow the official Mason-Dixon knitting pattern, so I played around with the number of stitches and decreases, and came out with triangle shapes that fit together either in larger triangles or in a circle. After lots of rearranging, I decided to go with the circle-- it's only about 3 or 3.5 feet in diameter, but it's the perfect size for a little rug. And I can always make a bigger, square rug for the rest of the room!

** If you do choose to do a project such as this one with recycled materials, beware that everyone will soon be handing you clothes as they clean out their closets! It's a nice challenge, though, to try and figure out how to re-use and reclaim the materials, especially if they can be returned to the owner in a new format!**

Ok, so that might be a little bit of an exaggeration. But the other day my sister sent me an invite to join the website shelfari, where you can keep a log of the books you've read and want to read, and can be friends with others and see what they're reading. It is amazing. I am always looking for the next great book to read, and lately I've been on such a reading kick that it seems like a great way to find new books and track what I've read.
And it's so easy to use! And they give you a virtual shelf, and place copies of your books on the shelf. I also discovered how to post it to my blog-- on the right hand side is the widget that allows me to show some of my favorite books. I love it when this stuff works!
Anyway, everyone should go and join, and if anyone visiting my blog has a book they could recommend, I would love to hear about it!