Stash!

I couldn’t help myself: I bought one of those Webs Grab Bags.

It arrived today.

I have to admit that, for the money, it looks like a paltry collection. It is mostly DK, fingering or light worsted, and in smallish skiens (mostly under 100 yds) so it doesn’t take up much space.

But it’s mine. I have my own little yarn store now. 10 balls of each won’t make five sweaters for me, but it should make a few summer tops, and since this is mostly cotton, I’m quite fine with that.

I’m not crazy about two of the colours, but wait a minute on second thoughts I do like the blue. It’s very spring-like. And the taupe/brown is not a colour I would have chosen, but I don’t hate it. It would combine nicely with other colours too….but that means more purchasing. Oh dear. What have I started?

Yarn Fumes

I just suffered my first bout with yarn fumes.

I got this email and stood, frozen at my computer for a good five minutes, fingers poised, working out how many sweaters that would be and whether or not I wanted to be tied to this much yarn and how long it would be until I could explain another yarn purchase if I did it.

In the end, my internet connection crapped out (something that happens a lot on my laptop) and I took it as a sign.

I confessed my almost-purchase to my husband who said, “And you didn’t get it?”, which set the ball rolling again.

He went out and I obsessed some more. He came back and I said, “Can I spend $190 on yarn?”

The bonus came in recently and he has been frustrated by his own lack of something frivolous to purchase. These things weighed on his mind, I think, and he shot me a muted, “Go.”

I ran, with the sounds of him telling our five year old “Go after her! Stop her!” ringing in my ears…but it was too late. I was (or should be) committed.

I was lightheaded. I could hardly type in my phone number. These are not the dollar figures I normally associate with yarn purchases. I’m not a hoarder. I buy a ball here or there, I buy enough for a sweater if I have one in mind. The last and only time I bought a bag of yarn without a pattern in mind, it was for a black cardigan for myself and I knew that it was inevitable that I would knit it, since the perfect black cardi is my eternal quest.

I checked out before I changed my mind.

Hubbie Instant Messaged “Did you do it?”
“Yup”, I typed.

There was a pause. GoogleTalk informed me that he was typing.

“Now you have to buy something for me,” he said.

And we wonder why we never have any money!

Dying Yarn

Well the yarn turned out looking lovely, and no, you can’t see it because it’s dark and I haven’t taken a picture of it yet. I’ll take one tomorrow in the daylight, I promise.

I used jet black and burgundy to make solid stripes (if you can have such a thing) and dotted a mix of the burgundy and sapphire blue together to make purple dots on a third section of the yarn, which I’m hoping will turn out to look like one of those fake fairisle type patterns on self-striping socks.

I managed to wait until this morning to unwrap the yarn and rinse it. Then I disentangled my three skeins from each other, wound them in a ball, rewound that into a center-pull ball and then made a nice loose loop from that, that is drying in the basement. (See what I mean about unneccsarily complicated?)

Want to cast on. Want to cast on. Must wait until yarn no longer damp…

Lorna’s Laces Super Sock – Flame

I came home on a wet and dreary end-of-fall day to find a little package of loveliness waiting for me.

It’s one of those moments when I want to drop everything (including two incredibly cute boys) and cast on. Then I remembered that once I had wound the Black Watch version of this I was vaguely disappointed, because I had enjoyed looking at the hank so much. So I’m leaving these ones on display for a while.

But I also really enjoy wearing my Black Watch socks, so I now have an incentive to finish the little boy socks I’m working on now.

And yes, I have found )now that I’ve discovered them) that I do need to have a sock on the go, for those times when I can snatch a minute or two of knitting-as-therapy (it slows my breathing and untangles my shoulder muscles) but can’t do more than a very simple stitch. Cables and sweater-decreases are projects for a comfy armchair and a well-worn episode of Star Trek. Socks are for tossing into a bag, clipping to my belt-loops and working on while I trail around the garden and house after two sometimes-friendly-sometimes-fratricidal little boys.