log cabin moderne baby blanket a la Mason Dixon Knitting....

this is a super awesome and easy project - good for beginners like me.

until...and unless....

...until you're about to cast on for Block 3 and you have to use some of the bound off stitches of block 2...

and unless you're a loose, kind of "bind off" person - which I am not and which I did not do on Block 2. This was something I was unaware of until I attempted to cast on Block 3.

this took absolutely forever because I couldn't find the stitches, I didn't know if I was doing it right, and ultimately, the stitches were so tight that the needles were GRINDING together when I was trying to make stitches. oh yes, perhaps the fact that I was too engrossed in what I was doing to get up and turn on another light in the living room, thus requiring me to knit in relative muted lighting, increased the level of difficulty and limited my chances of speedy success.

oh yah... if you're a really good knitter, please don't laugh at my attempts to make sense and use proper 'knitting terms' to describe the absolute calamity that occurred while I was simply trying to cast on Block 3 of my log cabin moderne baby blanket.

all of that being said, I had great success finding the colour for Block 4 yesterday at my LYS and I'm truly looking forward to continuing to knit.

someday soon i will post a picture!

finally, on a totally geeky English teacher note, I started Vincent Lam's "Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures" last night and, with only 3 pages read, can completely understand why this man won the Giller Prize on his first attempt. brilliant. sigh.