Large, lacy temptation

Over the summer, I made an impulse purchase at my LYS: four skeins of laceweight alpaca/silk blend, in a lovely dusty rose color. I've been looking for the perfect lace shawl pattern ever since, but lately I've done a lot more searching. I'm telling myself I'm not allowed to cast on any more new projects, because 12 WIPs should be enough for anyone, but naturally, as soon as I made that decision the temptation to cast on for a sweater or a shawl tripled. I really, really want to knit a sweater, but I thought maybe I could subdue the large-project hunger with something large, intricate, and lacy.

I was out searching for patterns when I stopped dead in my tracks. Because, of course, I already have something large and lacy (and, conveniently, pink) on the needles. I'd been neglecting it because of an error I couldn't quite fix with my crochet hook, so it sat abandoned until I could summon the strength to either fix it or live with the mistake. I hauled it out the other day, and here's what it looks like now:



A large pink butterfly in the garden. The yarn is Cascade Sierra, a 80% cotton/20% wool blend. Here's the lace pattern, spread out (indoors this time- 20% wool isn't enough to protect a shawl from January temperatures for very long):



The completed non-trivet wanted in on the glamor shot action.



All this knitting seems not to have had much of an impact on my stash count, however- I have finished off exactly one ball of yarn this week. I've made sizable dents in some others, but I can't change the stash count yet. Maybe with the next non-trivet.

It's a what now?

My semantics prof has always taken an unusual interest in the stuff I'm knitting. It's not all that unusual for a professor to comment about my knitting, since I knit during my classes, but this particular professor tries to guess the identity of every project I bring to class. (I think he secretly wants to be a knitter.) Today he took a look at this:

and asked if I was making a trivet.

No, I said.

A what? I thought.

It turns out that some people, when they have to put hot dishes on the table, don't use a potholder. They use a trivet. If I were going to make a trivet, I think I would make it out of something thicker than sock yarn, but maybe the squareness of the thing just threw him off.

The non-trivet is, of course, the beginnings of another piece for the Sock Cabin Stashghan. I've been knitting on this almost exclusively since I started it- the log cabin thing is seriously adddictive- and here's what I've got so far:

Modelled by the capable husband. (Is there an official name for this kind of pillow? I get such strange looks when I call it a husband.)

I like the squares by themselves well enough, but I'm not really sure how they're going to look when I put them together. I'm trying to tell myself I don't care, and it's half true, but I do wonder about it from time to time.

When I started this thing, I was afraid I wasn't going to have enough sock yarn in my stash to get to the end of this blanket, especially because I blasted through lots of small bits on the first square. I now admit the total foolishness of this fear. I have not actually finished off a ball of yarn since the inside of the first square, and it occurs to me that this could be an enormous blanket by the time I've used up even a reasonable amount of the sock yarn stash. And the thought of all that blanket that lies ahead of me is enough to send me scrambling for the knitting. Clearly, I have some work ahead of me.

I need to learn to knit faster.

The new obsession

Puppy wants to do the big reveal of the new WIP; he's pretty excited!



Look! Look!
It's a log cabin from leftover sock yarn!



I do so love log cabin knitting. I don't know why. I know that huge amounts of garter stitch should be painfully boring, but it's not. It's great. No decreases, no purling, no worrying about color changes. You just pick a side, pick up some stitches, and go- no worries, no planning, just yarn and knitting. Very zen.

This is what grew out of that swatch-sized bit from yesterday; I've been knitting on it all day. I have since discovered that I have a burning need to knit more socks, so that their leftovers can be incorporated into the blankie. And those socks should be anklets, so that there's more yarn left over. Actually, I have discovered that I am sorely tempted to forgo the sock part altogether and convert my sock yarn stash into one large light-weight blankie.

And yes, blankie, not blanket. This thing is for me, and I don't care how weird the color combinations are. It's knitting nostalgia. It's souvenir stash in functional form. I remember fondly each project whose leftovers are in this patch. It's comforting knitting, and I fully expect it to grow into a mostly-grown-up comfort blankie.

Not to say that I'm paying no attention at all to how it looks. I'm trying to plan what happens, now that the stripes are so wide, when self-striping yarn gets worked in. I'll probably make several little blocks, like the one I have now, and put them together.

Puppy wants to model the blankie (and give his owner an excuse to take more gratuitous knitting pictures).



Ah, but what are puppy and owner not quite as excited about?



Weaving in ends. Ah. Every knitter's favorite part. If I were smart, I'd start weaving them in now, but what fun would that be? Besides, I just remembered some sock yarn that has failed to turn into socks four times, and I think it's going to have to go into this blankie...

I couldn't stop myself.

Uh-oh.



Bear, what is that you're holding?



Is that a new WIP?



Doesn't your owner have socks that look like that?

Well, yes. But I finally figured out what I wanted to do with my sock yarn leftovers, and the higher WIP count is totally worth it for the pleasure I get out of this kind of knitting. What is it? It's a secret! (But fans of Ann and Kay can probably figure it out...)

Unfortunate beginnings, and sock ideas

It's been less than a day, you say. How can things possibly have gone wrong?

Remember those Jaywalkers from yesterday? In a fit of frustration, after noticing a particularly stupid error ten rows back, I frogged them. Attempts to use crochet hooks to fix things several rows back almost always end in disaster for me. Trust me. It was better this way. I wasn't a big fan of the lack of stretchiness in the pattern anyway.

In the end, I successfully resisted the temptation to cast on for another sock immediately, bringing my WIP count down by one, but there's still the problem of that ball of yarn that's still in my stash, and now probably has all kind of bad knitterly mojo all over it.

Now, to be perfectly honest, it is not entirely my fault that I didn't cast on for another pair immediately. No, the fault lies with Dave, whose awesome Basketcase socks are designed to be knit with DK weight yarn. I wasn't entirely confident in my pattern-revising skills (or in my pattern-following skills, for that matter), so I put the yarn back in the drawer. I was, however, inspired to think about some patterns I want to knit.

Episode I: Socks

They warned me, when I started knitting socks, that they were addictive. They were right. I love socks because they're so portable, so easy to shove into a bookbag and take to class. I also love them because the muggles and fledgling knitters sitting around watching me knit always think they're so impressive. Inevitably, I'm stopped by someone who's stunned by my knitterly prowess- new knitters wearing fun fur scarves, 80-year-old men who want to know how you shape a heel, ignorant crocheters who tremble at the thought of wielding five needles at once. I feel terribly smart when I'm knitting socks.

The problem, though, is that they've gotten a little monotonous. I used to be fascinated by the different colors that came out in self-striping and variegated yarns, but apparently I've wised up a little. I've done DPNs and I've done Magic Loop. I've thrown cables down the side. I've done about everything I can think of to make the standard sock recipe more interesting, but in the end, it's still ribbing-flap-gusset-foot-toe, with the brief excitement of turning the heel in the middle. (If I could knit heels by themselves, I would be a happy knitter.)

So here's a list of new things- techniques and patterns- I want to try for socks. Hopefully it will make me more eager to work through my sock yarn collection. (And maybe some of the other stuff- worsted weight socks, anyone?)

• Basketcase socks
  
• 2-at-once socks (flap heel variation)
  
• Arrrgyles (or Arcrgyle-inspired variation)
  
• Lacy socks of some kind
  
• Baby socks (to eliminate the sock-yarn leftovers)

I'm also keeping a weather eye out for alternate uses for sock yarn leftovers, like knitting stuffed animals (or stuffing stuffed animals, which would take less time, I would think).

Introduction: Meet the Monster

The problem comes in two parts. The first part: My living space is being slowly but surely consumed by yarn.


There's a sock perched on my bed, ready to strike with its tiny stabby needles...


...Jaywalkers lounging on the little bookcase...


...bags of sock yarn laying around, waiting to trip people...


...and this whole shelf setup- and a scarf waiting on the chair.

I had managed to remain blissfully content with this system, ignoring the fact that I no longer had anywhere to sit or set things down. That is, I was blissfully content until today, when it occurred to me to wonder just how much yarn I really have.

I think in the knitting world this is universally considered a bad thing to wonder. I ignored the feeling of queasiness that came over me and counted. The totals?

146 skeins, balls, hanks, and wads of yarn.
12 works in progress.
9 items in the frog pond.

I had to sit down at this point; I was feeling a little dizzy. Because shortly after coming up with these totals, I realized the other half of my problem: I'm going to be moving this year.

Imagine. 146 skeins, ball, hanks, and wads of yarn, packed into boxes and hauled cross country. Imagine that shelf inside my little car. Imagine trying to get anything else in the car- like clothes, or a toothbrush.

Not a pretty picture.

After I recovered somewhat from the shock, I made a resolution: I am going to knit like crazy to get this stash down to a managable size. Ideally, I'd like to get it down to the point where it fits into one drawer.

There are a few additional guidelines. First is that giving away yarn is a perfectly acceptable stash-reducing strategy. I know full well that I am very, very unlikely to give stash away unknitted, but I need an escape clause for the few yarns in my stash- and there will be a few- that I simply cannot bear to knit with. (And I have a skein of poop brown acrylic in mind as I type this.)

The second guideline is this: It does me no good to knit the whole stash but take all the knitted objects with me. Lots of the knitted stuff will be going away as gifts or donations. Alternatively, if I'm knitting things I need, I will do my best to make sure whatever worn-out thing is being replaced actually goes away.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some knitting to do. Toodle-pip.