Honestly, if you are a beginner, you would be better off with an all-one-color pattern to develop your skills. You could be practicing ribbing, cables, basketweave for example. There are a million fun patterns, even some that you work in an image. The last one I did was an owl, and it was very cute and fun to do.

Did you join ravelry.com? You should. As much as I love GardenWeb, Ravelry is super-active with hundreds of patterns and forums to help you which have more traffic than here.

socks12345, great suggestions! Thank you!!