Knitting v. Sewing

While home for Christmas (which was a fantastic, if frantic, time) my mom and I managed to steal a little time to get me started on my first knitting project. I can see a lot of advantages to knitting over sewing - it's less time-consuming (well... sometimes), requires less materials, requires less space, is easily transportable, and has a huge community of people who are usually pretty visible. Meaning, if I wanted to seek out some people to knit with and to learn from, it wouldn't be any problem. With sewing, not so easy.

So without further ado, here is my completed wham bam thank you lamb! neckwarmer, courtesy of Susan Chang's pattern on Ravelry.com.

Not so bad! You have to have a membership to join Ravelry.com, but it doesn't cost anything, and so far they haven't sent me any obnoxious emails or newsletters. The pattern is very simple, but I still needed Mom's help. She's an expert knitter and walked me through it, until I had to finish it up back home in Bloomington. Then I called her up whining about seaming the two ends together. I searched and searched for a tutorial, and there's lots out there on youtube, TECHknitting, knittinghelp.com, Ravelry.com, and so on - but none that explained exactly what to do for this particular type of stitch. So I got impatient and just winged it. It's less than perfect, but it's totally warm and wearable, and I'm satisfied.

The next pattern I'd like to try is the honey cowl by Madelinetosh, also on Ravelry.com:

Cowls just seem like perfect beginner material. Plus, no loose dangly ends like scarves. But what do knitters do when it gets warm out? I've looked at patterns for "shirts", vests, skirts, dresses, and I'm not convinced. Unless you are an Irish lass skipping around the countryside, I don't think you can pull off most of those looks. For example:

Lovely, but this girl couldn't even think of something to pair with it, except for mermaid hair.