A Little Yarn On The Side

Mature & lasting relationships are truly wonderful, but sometimes you just need fast & easy.

Andy is out with the boys, so I have an evening to myself. I'll be picking out an old movie and working on this, which is the alpaca cardigan if you can't see it through Theo, who would not stay off of it long enough for me to get a clear picture. The ham. And there is a new hat.... made with a Bernat acrylic that I am almost embarrassed to admit I am completely besotted by. I love these colors! I don't know exactly why I only bought two skeins--showing so little restraint at all other times--but this might be one of those things added to the "when I can buy again" list. I generally avoid acrylics, but I think I could make an exception for this yarn. I haven't quite determined the pattern yet--ribbed cuff, followed by maybe some off-white snowflake color work? Or maybe an all-over duplicate stitch "flecked" pattern? Or maybe a tapering pattern of some sort? Or maybe colorwork in black? We'll see what it looks like when I get there. For n...

Spring is in the air, and a reasonably-young woman's thoughts turn lightly to..... NEW KNITTING PROJECTS!!!! For the first three months of The Year of the Stash, I made a new project every month--FINISHED and all--which is very good for the knitting psyche. April was the WIP month, in which I didn't start anything new, finished 2 WIPs, and frogged 5--definitely NOT good for the knitting psyche. Today Dana blogged about some great hats she had made & mentioned what great portable projects they are..... But I have SO many projects on the needles.....this one needs sleeves: That would be portable...I can just think of it as a really ugly hat (like I haven't made plenty of THOSE before), and the yarn comes in these puffy 120-yard balls that knit up pretty quickly and I can add them to the Yarn Used tally.... Reasoning which did at least get me this far. But it's black. Black isn't spring. Spring is...... Hm......................... ................................

Today I finished this: A fleece jacket, started sometime last year. Whew! Good thing it's done as it reached a nippy 75 degrees today. My timing is obviously not that great, but sometimes a FINISHED PROJECT is more important than a useful object.... OK. Some of you have noticed the stabilizer still in place and the lack of buttons, but I would have already washed it had the washing machine not started holding laundry hostage yesterday. (Those front-loaders are devious, let me tell you.) The lack of buttons is because of the washing machine issue. When the stabilizer is washed away, it may become obvious that white buttons are the only way to go, or it might be that a subtle wooden button would look best. No way of knowing really until I can wash it, and the repair man can't be here until Tuesday. I realize that this really shouldn't count as a "finished object" just yet, but while I am used to getting my "arse" kicked regularly by the sewing mac...

The good news : I just finished the third ball of yarn on the Lady's Circular Cape, which brings me to 6,432 yards of yarn, or just over 3 and a half miles of yarn used so far this year. YAY! The bad news : I'm not quite to the edging, and it seems that a lot of knitters are running out of yarn on this project--even ones who made it farther than I did with that third ball of yarn. The ones who had purchased clearance or discontinued yarns for this project have resulted to weeping, bartering, and knitting voodoo dolls of the designer, which they pierce repeatedly with size one knitting needles. I don't think my yarn is out of stock, but buying more yarn would be breaking the rules of The Year of the Stash, and having made it 4 months already..... I don't know for certain that I will run out of yarn, but if I do, it will result in putting this away until 2009, which would be really, REALLY irritating as I am totally enamored of this project. It's soft, it's g...

After some extensive digging, this was located in my nightstand shelf, and the French Poodle received some attention tonight. Now I would be ready to cast on for the sleeve if I could just locate those size 8 DPNs.....

April was not a very good month for The Year of the Stash. The WIP Mountain remains, though arguably smaller...sort of. Two WIPs were finished: Five WIPs were frogged, the Baby Surprise Sweater getting the ax today for having an error that was too much work to fix. Two WIPs were thrown away, (we'll skip the pictures--they were ugly projects that I no longer want to admit to) One sewing project was finished, which I am counting as a net stash depletion of just over 2 yards--quilts being very difficult to measure, 7 skeins and 1024 yards of yarn were used up, and no fabric nor yarn purchased. Four months--that is certainly a record for me. (To be fair--any actual stash decrease is a record for me) Theo is in mourning for the loss of the quilt, which is wrapped & ready to go to its recipient this weekend. I'd like to say that the two washings and a vacuuming removed every trace of cat hair from it, but I'm trying to keep this blog a work of non fiction.