A Little Yarn On The Side

The deceptive thing about some lace projects is that it really feels like you're almost done when you reach the edging. The reality is, you're not even close. I have been working on the Lady's Circular Cape pretty faithfully (for me) for the past couple days, and this is how far I've gotten. It looks pretty far & feels pretty far until you look at how far I have left to go just on the bottom. Those are some very closely scrunched stitches, and each of those requires 2 rows of edging. Doing a little math, which is rarely a good idea at such times but I did it anyway, there are 684 stitches on the needle by the time you finish the body. Each of those requires a minimum of 2 rows (sometimes 4, but that's just too overwhelming to contemplate right now), so the bottom ALONE takes 1368 rows of knitted edging. Then there are the 2 sides and the top as well.... Heaven help me. The good news is that in the Year of the Stash Plan, this was optimistically listed as...

The good news is, my stash progress makes math really easy. The bad news is, I had hoped for more progress by now. Of course, considering I have even slightly less yarn than I started out the year with is huge progress for me--not to mention a real first. Today I finished THE PROJECT OF MISTAKES. Seriously, if there is a mistake that can be made on a quilt, it's on here. The blocks are done backwards, so the cool intertwining circle motif doesn't exist, I decided I didn't want to have to bind the quilt, so I sewed the edges together much as one would sew a pillow together, which in turn made it impossible to lay out flat to quilt. I tried out some machine embroidery in the center of the circles, not noticing until too late that some of the embroidery designs were set as squares & some are on point like a diamond. I started this thing about 4 years ago & all the mistakes had banished it to the Project Time-Out Bin ever since. I have occasionally taken it o...

Today I finished the Fruity Pebbles socks which brings me to 50 balls of yarn used this year!!!!!!!! HAPPY DANCE (in some sporty new socks even)!!!! Just think how exciting that would be if I hadn't bought 75 balls of yarn in December....that would actually be a net stash decrease....but I'm still hopeful for a net decrease overall. I do still have 7 more months. In a fit of resolution, madness, or total rebellion because I really did have other projects I needed to work on, I even finished a fall table runner that I started about 3 years ago: which means I average about one square a year. Truly a scary concept if I ever decide to make a king-size quilt--does cotton rot in 50 years????? And the latest obsession-- the Lady's Circular Cape, which is now at the border stage. I love the cleverness of knitted-on borders--it's such a great way to finish lace. Even if it does take FOREVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Last night I finished and blocked Sweet Pea and am now stuck with trying to figure out a way to wear a wool scarf in the summer because I am STILL madly in love with this scarf & really, really, REALLY want to wear it. And better yet--I have now used 49 balls of yarn and over 7000 yards of yarn from the stash!!!! Happy dance!!!!!!!!

I have no idea if "memed" is a word, or if "meme" is a word (spell check is saying no), but basically there's a large-scale game of blogger tag, and I'm "IT," having been tagged by Jill and by Toni in Florida . The Rules: Rules are posted at the beginning. At the end of the post, the player tags 6 people and posts their names. Then the player goes to each of the “named” people’s blogs and leaves a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog. If you’ve been tagged, you do the same, letting the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer. Your answer, of course, is the answer to the following questions. Here we go! 1. What was I doing 10 years ago? I believe I was working for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation as a contract fundraiser (I would later become permanent staff for a total of two years.) I had been in telecommunication sales, but that was during the frenzy of telecom mergers, and I had ...

My love affair with the scarf continues.... to the exclusion of all other projects, including the birthday poncho, which I really truly have been working on until I met Sweet Pea here. Why can I only develop good habits when it's a really inopportune time to do so?

After deciding to do The Year of The Stash, I allowed myself one last purchase from Knitpicks in December of 2007 : Today is May 22 and I have not yet used up the number of skeins I bought in just one order. I'm not even that close . Yardage-wise I might be a little bit better (though there was some lace-weight in there, so that might be even worse), but it is going to take me at least a total of 6 months of knitting to use up the yarn I added to the stash "just in case." Granted, it was a much larger order than I normally would place (sale + not getting any new yarn for an entire year), but under normal circumstances, I would have purchased a similar amount in smaller orders by now--AND have not knit any faster than I currently am. Anyone ever tried knitting from stash for 2 years????????????????????????????????