making progress

last year some time i decided to knit my daughter a blanket. a whole blanket for her twin bed. thus far i hadn't done much other than scarves... and by other i mean a washcloth or two and practice. figured it was time for me to branch out into at least a larger quadrilateral. what better than a blanket? so i looked for patterns and found nothing that i liked. so i used what i was finding to determine how many stitches i had to cast on in order to have something wide enough (provided of course, my stitches were the right size...) and then made up my own pattern. given the size of the thing and  my still relatively novice status, i decided that i'd just knit (no perls, no combination) but use different colors of yarn to make it interesting Her favorite color at the time was purple, it's since, apparently, become red but whatever. purple is the theme. at this point i can't actually remember when  i started it, but after a haitus, i've gotten back to it and plan to keep at it until it's done. hopefully it's finished before she graduates from high school (she's 7)...

i don't recall how many stitches across it is. it's a lot. Not sure how many rows i've done or how long it'll end up being aside from needing it to be as long as a twin... xl twin perhaps so she can take it to college, lol. i can say it's providing much practice. i think i've done pretty well at keeping the stitches relatively consistent, there are only a couple holes, and i've gotten better at spotting a potential issue and being able to fix it before it's a big problem (added stitch, dropped stitch, etc.). I've been using the... American method I think it is, where you have the working yarn in the right hand. I'm considering trying the other one, Continental?, where you have the working yarn in the left hand. I can see how that would be faster. I tried it the other day and lasted about half a row. I'm not sure if the change in motion made my hand hurt more quickly or if my hand was just having a bad day... but we'll see... but progress is being made which is kind of exciting.