A Little Yarn On The Side

After two years of frantically completing as many projects as possible, it's still odd to be working on something as large as a sweater--which might explain this: Another men's mock aran hat!  At least this time it was actually from yarn that was already in my Valentine's stashdash basket, but it did leave the mohair jacket neglected and alone all day yesterday.  I have determined, however, to not be seduced by any more hats for at least a week, which should give me time to finish the back and start the fronts of the jacket. If it takes me an entire month to finish a sweater in bulky yarn, I am indeed in trouble this year!

Yesterday I decided to face the worst and finally check the inventory of my lace weight bin, and can now say that there were at one point 7 hanks of the green laceweight, but the first hank used on dem fischer sin fru seems to be too old to be frogged and is coming off in small bits and pieces, so there are now officially six hanks.  It's the Knitpicks Alpaca Cloud, which is really one of my favorite yarns and I really love the color, so I'm not sorry to have a lot of this yarn--though I might be slightly glad to have not discovered 8 or 9 unaccounted for hanks.  I am happy to report that I did not discover any more 1375-yard hanks of forgotten cobweb lace yarn.  One should not find more than one of those hanks per month.  I do admit that I did not choose to explore any more yarn tubs.  I think I'd like to see a bit more yarn on my "knit up for the year" tab before I find myself blindsided by some mystery yarn of which I have no recollection or thought. ...

....but not to anything in my basket.   Actually, I'm probably not being "monogamous" as that probably means only one project and I am working on two, but announcing that I am being a bigamist just doesn't sound right.  But it is sort of like progress to be keeping myself committed to just two projects.   It's somewhat easier to not be seduced by anything else in the stash, as I don't think the stash is playing nicely today.  Remember this? The 1375-yard hank of cobweb yarn that wasn't on my Ravelry stash?  It has a friend.  At least one.  I had finally steeled myself to dig in the laceweight bin to see how much of the green yarn from dem fischer sin fru I really had, and ran into a second 1375-yard hank of yarn that isn't on Ravelry.  It must be breeding.  I decided that perhaps I didn't really want to play with the laceweight after all if THAT was the sort of behavior I could expect.  As a consequence, the mohair jacket has...

The Valentine's Stash Dash challenge, which I am leading, kicked off on January 1.  In less than 24 hours, I was cheating on my basket: I think that might be a new personal record.  I'm not sure if I just wasn't in the mood to design a vest, or if I'm just in a selfish mood and wanted to make something for myself, or if I was seduced by the idea of making a sweater in bulky yarn so my sad little "used up" tally could actually have some numbers on it, but whatever the case, this seems to be helping me get past the "must finish as many projects as possible" mindset and transition to "sweater" mindset.  At least it has for the past 24 hours, but that obviously means nothing.  If I have cast on a new shawl by this time tomorrow, then I think there might need to be a bit more transitioning.... I'm making the Maggie Rennard Jacket from Knitting Today's Classics , but there's an odd pocket detail which would be (from what I u...

Admittedly, part way through the year, my one-thread-per-month-on-the-dang-cross-stitch resolve fell apart--probably when canning season kicked in, which is what did in everything else.  BUT, it probably got more attention this year than it has in the previous 4 years combined, so I thought it was time to check the progress. What it looked like at the beginning of 2011: What it looks like at the beginning of 2012: Hm....maybe I stopped sooner than I thought.............