Entry for Contest: First time...

...knitting!

Here's my entry for Emma Gorodok's cool contest for her amazing bag pattern. As we are supposed to write about our first time trying a certain knitting technique, I chose the first time I learned to knit in general.

As a service project for a group, my friends and I decided that we would knit lap blankets for a children's hospital in Chicago named Shriners. One of my friends is in a wheelchair and heads down to this hospital almost monthly, so we figured she could take the blankets down and she and her family could help pass out the blankets to wheelchaired patients.

None of us knew anything about knitting at this time. My best friend's mom came in and taught each of us individually how to cast on, knit, and cast off. We all thought it was so hard in the beginning and so tedious. We had to cast on 160 stitches on size 10 needles, so it took a long time for any of our hard effort to show.

A few of us caught the knitting bug from this, though. We ignored the ugly garter-stitch, Red Heart lap blanket and moved on to projects that were more fun--hats, scarves, etc. At group meetings we bring out our other projects instead of the lap blankets we began with!

Now that it's been almost a year since that fateful day, a few more of us finally have those lap blankets finished. I finally sat down and finished mine. Though it's anything but perfect, I'm sure the patients at Shriner's will appreciate it.

Here's a work in progress pic of that lumpy lap blanket:

There you have it!