First, a bit of history...

Once upon a time (i.e. a few years ago), there was this girl -- we'll call her Caroline -- who wanted to learn how to knit. Why? This will remain a mystery, even to her. Caroline's mom knows everything, or so the knitter-to-be thought. "Mama, can you teach me how to knit?", she asked (except what she really said was "Maman, peux-tu m'apprendres à tricoter?"... Yes, Caroline speaks a weird and mysterious language sometimes known as Canadian French).

Much to her surprise, the mother replied that she didn't know how to knit. Crushed, Caroline put away all of her knitting dreams, convinced she would never learn the craft.

Now fast-forward a couple of years. We are now in December 2003. Caroline has a two weeks holiday break from work. Joy! Happiness! Boredom! Inspired, she suddenly decides that she would learn how to knit and that in fact, she would learn how to knit right at this moment. So off to Wallmart she goes. There, she finds a little "I taught myself how to knit" kit (as well as a "I taught myself how to crochet" one that has yet to be used). She also buys some yarn that fitted all the qualities she thought were needed in a yarn (i.e. the colours were pretty). So Caroline gets home, she sits comfortably on the couch, book in hand. She learns how to cast-on and then how to do the knit stitch. "Woohoo! I can knit!", she proudly thought.

Caroline puts the book down and decide to begin the obligatory first scarf project. Unfortunately, things don't go too well and what was supposed to be a long pretty scarf quickly becomes a sort of weirdly shaped piece of fabric. So our hero puts down the needles and doesn't touch them for a couple of months.

Then, in February or so, she picks them back up and start a brand new scarf with brand new yarn. This time, she decides to count the stitches on every row. After what seems like an eternity (it was really three months), she has her first -- still uneven but much better looking -- scarf (see Figure 1).


Figure 1. Caroline's first scarf

What I haven't mentionned yet is that while she was working on that scarf, Caroline had heard of a knitting book called Stitch N' Bitch that seemed to be all the rage. Of course, curiosity got to her and she ended up buying the book. She fell in love with many of the patterns and the love affair still continues today.

But back to the knitting projects. After the scarf, Caroline decides she wants a bag. So why not try one that's in the beloved book? And with that, she starts her second knitting project: Zeeby's bag. It takes a month to finish and ends up not looking exactly like the original, but she likes it nonetheless and still uses it often (see Figure 2 and 3.)


Figure 2. Zeeby is resting on Caroline's lay-z boy.


Figure 3. Caroline is pretending to carry Zeeby for the photographer**.

Since then, Caroline hasn't stopped knitting but for some unknown reason, she can't seem to finish anything. She currently has three projects on the needles (two of them are almost done now) and she can't wait to show them off.

She also has an insanely long list of "To-Knit" items...

**There was no photographer, I made that up.