A Little Yarn On The Side

And the back of the sweater is almost done.  Exciting, but considering that the month is 1/3 over and this is NOT 1/3 of the sweater, I may need to pick it up a bit.  The problem, of course, is monogamy.  Over the weekend there was some attempted sewing, and nothing brings the felines running like laying out a pattern.  Calisto waited patiently for her turn, but she never got her chance.  Theo is amazingly determined about these things: Part of the time was spent sorting patterns and clearing off the things that had been moved INTO the sewing room to clear out room for the desk, but I still might have gotten more than two pattern pieces cut out if it weren't for Theo.  Instead, I made a new lace Santa ornament and started a new rope bowl, because no matter how hard they try, the cats can't actually be everywhere at once--even if their fur CAN. Strangely, the biggest challenge to the March Madness Sweater is the counting of WIP rows...

*  Theo and I have been cleaning up the back room though one of us is more into supervising.  The back bedroom was where I had the movers place the boxes that weren't room specific.......and some of them are still there.  So, we're sorting out things that can be donated to charity--including two afghans I made out of Red Heart Acrylic.  Not that there's anything wrong with Red Heart, but it isn't the softest stuff and is cheap enough that these two afghans replaced two red ones I had in college that I gave away when my color choices changed.  We haven't used them in over 7 years, so it wasn't a difficult decision. *  The reason for this new found cleaning (because "it just really needs it" doesn't often work with me) is this: I have always wanted a roll top desk, but they are generally really expensive and the really fun ones aren't made for computers.  But when we moved here, I gave my desk to Andy for the office, and I haven't ...

Which theoretically means that I regain my crafting sanity on the first of April, right?  I will make a note to remember how that feels.  As a woman with over 50,000 yards of lace yarn alone, it's not a sensation I'm overly familiar with..... So, yesterday I hemmed and hawed and looked at the patterns and the yarns, and this morning went a completely different route.  This has at least been in my queue for at least a year, and is DEEP stash--another colorway of the alpaca I've hoarded stashed in so many colorways.  I bought this in 2006 to make a sweater for my husband while we were on our honeymoon, and still have 17 skeins of it left.  It doesn't take up quite as much space in the closet as the Lion Brand yarn, but it takes up a lot of mental stash.  When it came down to it, almost everything else I was looking at would require alterations of some sort, or longer needles, and after 2.5 years of a LOT of knitting, my hands get tired faster w...

I am ending February having used: Yards of fabric:  1.75 Yards of yarn: 440 Skeins of yarn: 2 Whew!  It's hard to know what to do with all the space THAT cleared up.....................

Ever since one of the brilliant members of the Stashdown group designed the Cold Sheeping badges for us, I have been obsessed with them.  First it was getting the gold one-year badge.  Then the bright 15, 18, and 21 month badges were introduced, and I was a lost woman.  Then she introduced the PINK 2-year badge, and I have thought of little since.  And now she's said that there will be a THREE year badge....... The badges are like Alcoholics Anonymous--they are for consecutive days with NO yarn purchases at all.  Pre-badge, I always allowed myself to buy yarn to finish a project if I needed to, and I had done various "reward yarn" experiments, which were always pretty much a disaster.  I'd like to think that my stash has shrunk a great deal in the last 6.5 years, and I think it has, but I never had a full tally of ALL my yarn to begin with, and the "I'm-feeling-sorry-for-myself-over-the-back" binge was a WHOPPER, but now that the stash is all contained...

I think it might have been the horror at the very idea of going near Joann Fabrics, but yesterday I ended up with an upset stomach and spent most of the day resting.  I suppose some people might have put such time to good use and worked on the project with the biggest looming deadline, but I always have to be different.  I spent the day with a different mohair project!  It's a year and a half old now, and the pattern calls for 19 32-row pattern repeats, and yesterday I finished number 11.  Believe it or not, I can get extremely excited about checking off another set, so stomach issues aside, I had a pretty good day.  It's in the ostrich plume stitch pattern, so I could work on it without consulting the pattern on every row--unlike the new mohair pattern--so I listened to an audio book and knit for much of the day.  I broke my WIP-finishing streak, but I still want to finish them, and this would be a BIG one to finish.  And now it's more than 55% ...

I have my Great Decisions group this afternoon, and I could drop by Joanns on the way there to see if they have any more of these: which are the buttons I used on the floral jacket that I lost and the ones I wanted to use on the replacement.  They are fussy buttons that cannot be washed, which is the sort of button I am likely to end up having a dozen of.  But, no. And there isn't a chance that I have them stashed away somewhere because my button stash is one of the few things that is REALLY organized.  These are the normal buttons.  (Children's buttons have their own box)  They are sorted by size and are all machine washable.  I tried buying them with projects, but the buttons I think will work in the store never really do at home, so I switched to buying them when they're on sale and then sorting through to find what I like when the project is done.  Then there is the little box, which contains buttons that are hand-wash only or that canno...