Lead us not into temptation

So... the stash grew.

The first purchase was intentional. I've been longing to knit a sweater for a while now, and when I got my tax return, I knew just what it wanted to become: the Stacy Pullover from Big Girl Knits.



Look at the yummy stitch pattern! (The color is digitally unenhanced- I couldn't figure out a way to keep the color and the stitch definition. :/) I'm very excited for this sweater, since I don't have many sweaters.

(The best reaction came from my roommate, who, as I was describing BGK's totally awesome approach to plus-size knitting, gave me a horrified look and said, "But you're not a plus size!" Oh yes I am, darling, and I'm not ashamed, either. I like my curves; I like feeling like I have substance. Not to mention I actually get to enjoy food this way.)

I flew into this sweater, doing the fastest knitting I think I've ever done. I got the yarn on Thursday, and yesterday the sweater looked like this:



The armhole shaping seems to defy my ability to count, but I started on the sleeve so that I could have something relatively mindless to work on during class. I really want to wear this sweater before it gets too warm. (Which, the way the weather is going, means I've got at least three months to finish it.)

That was the planned purchase. And then... today happened.

I walked into the yarn store with the intention of getting some of the sale sock yarn I had seen when I got the sweater. The sock yarn bin was gone, so I skimmed through the other things, thinking maybe I would see a skein of something really interesting. I wandered past some ribbon and some silk, and then.

Then.

From across the store: a sunshiny yellow.

I sprinted over to it, the happiest color of yarn I have ever seen in my life. In the middle of a blizzard, I needed some sunshine. I picked it up and fondled it a little bit. I tell you, I could feel the sunshine oozing out of the fiber. I was in a trance. I picked it up and took it home and made it my pet.



...along with several of its brothers and sisters.



It's a good thing I only had cash on me, because if I had had plastic, I would have gotten the other five balls. (Hey, it was clearance yarn- $4 a ball! How could I resist that?) It's a good thing the roads are snowy and awful, or I might have gone back to get the rest of them. I've never experienced a yarn like this before- I didn't even stop to think, just picked up all the yarn I could afford and took it to the counter. No second thoughts. No project in mind. Just absolute bliss in my fibery trance.

Now what will I do with 800 yards of sunshiny yellow yarn?

Maybe I'll just fondle it for a while.

Emergency winter knitting

It is absolutely freezing cold here, so cold that the local TV stations are running school closings at the botton of the screen, and I haven't seen them repeat in more than ten minutes. Every sensible school has called things off, since there's been a wind chill advisory, you can get frostbite in minutes, and nobody wants students out walking in that kind of weather- except our lovely university. Since I was out walking in the -20 and more wind chill today, and I didn't have a hat or a scarf, I needed to crank out some FO's, very fast.

Look, an FO!


I finished this guy last night, so it was ready to wear today, and I managed not to lose my ears to frostbite. It's a double-knit hat in what my semantics prof calls "patriotic" colors. Nice and thick, and...

Reversible. Isn't double knitting great? That folded-up part is the best, because it makes the fabric quadruple thick over my ears and forehead, where I need it most.

Next up: the dishcloth. This is so boring there's no point in taking pictures of it. It's just a super thick garter stitch washcloth, made as a hint for a housemate and said housemate's egg-coated frying pan. I finished it to be able to say I had finished something, and together with the acquisition of my soon-to-be job and the completion of last semester's coursework- finally- I had an excuse to celebrate by buying some yarn for a scarf.



Mmm, Manos. The colorway is mulled wine:



That's what I had on Friday, and today I had this:



Leftovers on the head of the Yarn Guardian.

No, really, the spider is the Yarn Guardian. He was a gift from my friend the Peony in the aftermath of a moth scare. See, his tag proves it:



(Too fuzzy? It says "I am the Yarn Guardian. I eat moths!")

Oh, what else did the Manos turn into? This:



Check out the awesomeness: It's a reversible cabled scarf. I was knitting away during Knitty Gritty on Thursday, when Lily Chin was on, and she uttered the magic words: Reversible cables. I about snapped my neck, I looked up so fast. Cables that look the same on both sides? Who ever heard of such a thing?

I wasn't sure I was going to have enough. I got two hanks, ostensibly of 135 yards each, but when I got done with the first one I had a little less than what I considered to be half a scarf. But either I had invisible gauge changes, or "about 135 yards" isn't a terribly precise measurement, because this is how much difference there was between the two hanks:



That's, like, a foot of knitting. Kind of a big difference. Fortunately, the scarf came out exactly the length I was hoping for, so all in all the Yarn Guardian and I are pleased.



With any luck, all this knitting will help me come through the long walks in the arctic blasts with all my body parts un-frostbitten.