A Little Yarn On The Side

So, if you had injured yourself about 6 weeks ago, had undergone physical therapy for the past month, and your therapist told you that getting stronger through exercise would really help your progress, what would you do?  Start slowly?  Remember that your injury might still be healing and act accordingly?  Or go hog-wild with a week of Pilates, walking, hill-climbing on the treadmill, weight-lifting and the elliptical trainer?  Anyone want to take a guess which was my approach? The spine doctor was concerned about the other hip turning, but thinks that I probably overdid (me?) and that the treadmill was too much impact for my hips at this stage, so I have been given permission to 1. swim, 2. weight lift with only low weights and large numbers of repetition, 3. do beginning Pilates.  NOTHING else.  And have earned myself 4 more weeks of physical therapy for my misbehavior. The funny thing is, I did know I would be relatively dangerous to myself when I ...

Meet "the sulks" knitting: Yesterday--after waking up two mornings in a row with painful back spasms, which hasn't happened in at least a month or more--I had my last physical therapy appointment, only to discover that the other hip had turned slightly, and was causing the same problems on the other side of my back.  I see the spine specialist today, but how the other side has gotten turned is anyone's guess, because the physical therapy exercises have worked both sides equally, and I've grown so strong that some of the exercises have had to be made more difficult.  I came home depressed, to say the least, and curled up with my self pity and knitting. The yarn is Knit Picks Decadence, which was discontinued quite a while ago, and as the balls were leftover from a sweater I made, I hadn't bothered to add them to Ravelry, but since I still have quite a bit left now I have added it.   I think I can get a second hat out of this, so perhaps it won't b...

I really, really was working on the mohair sweater yesterday.  I promise.  However, it turns out that when I take a drink of coffee and end up with a mouth full of coffee grounds, my natural impulse is to spit it back into the cup.  Not exactly worthy of Ms. Manners, but perhaps understandable.  This probably works with normal coffee mugs, but when one is drinking out of a travel mug complete with lid , the coffee's natural impulse is then to splash off of the lid and onto the nearest, whitest object.  Which explains why this spent yesterday being rinsed and dried, and why there is now a second birthday sock in progress which also was not in my Valentine's basket.  I was at first a bit concerned that the socks won't get to count for anything on my 12 12s list, but as they were in progress before the start of the year, I'll count them as one of my 12 WIPs.  I may regret that later, as I'm hoping the need for finished WIPs will eventually drive ...

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...