When I was a kid, I did a LOT of cross-stitch. I think one year my sister and I cranked out Christmas ornaments for a huge list of people. I had always thought about learning to knit or crochet, but the time or opportunity just ever presented itself. Last year, my daughter joined a knitting club at school, and I decided it was time to time to try to learn. I used the sheets she was given and watched some videos on YouTube, and learned how to cast on, the knit stitch, the purl stitch, and the stockinette stitch. I started with scarves. I figured those were easy enough! I played around with the different stitches to get different looks and had fun doing it.
Then, my daughter lost interest, and life got busy with other things, so I didn’t work on anything for about a year. We recently had some new babies born in our family and circle of friends, so I got the urge to start working on some new projects to give as gifts. I had to watch the videos again, but was able to pick it back up. Then, my mom came to visit, and she was working on crocheting granny squares for Christmas stockings. Again, I watched a few videos and watched her work, and learned how to do chain, slip, single, double, half-double, and treble stitches. Then, after posting a few projects on Facebook, a friend from college let me know about a forum called, Ravelry.com, which is free to join, and has a TON of free and paid patterns for both knitting and crocheting. It was a whole new world opened up for me, and I have been busy creating since.
I’m hoping to be able to keep it up, and over the next few weeks, I will share my finished projects. As I work on more, I will share those too. I’m starting my younger daughter on knitting, and my older daughter has been knitting again and wants to learn to crochet as well. I’m excited at the opportunity to work with them on this as well!
My Gems of Parenting 
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