As they say in the Vaterland...

Ich bin dran. The lovely earthchic(k), originatress of the Seven Things project, has tagged me. The meme? 7 random things about me. I don't think this is coincidence, do you?

1. I was a conlanger in my youth. I made up languages- words, grammar, alphabets. Now I just make up alphabets and study conlangs that other people make up. This leads to the world's most awesome penpal arrangements. (!Shorah brehgeltahnteeokh D'ni)

2. I am considering consolidating all my blogs into this one.

3. I use the Dvorak keyboard layout, which is easier on my wrists (and therefore allows me more comfortable knitting time). However, people no longer like to share computers with me, since I have a habit of forgetting to switch the keyboard back, leaving the next unlucky person to wonder why the keyboard is typing gibberish.

4. I only eat cucumbers with feta cheese. I cannot stand either one of those foods separate from the other. This is a leftover from my trip to Greece, where the one food we could count on having at every single meal was a "salad" of cucumbers, feta, and tomatoes. And I don't like tomatoes.

5. This did not stop me from growing tomatoes last year on the patio last year.

6. My favorite prime number is 17, which totally pwns 23. 7 is my least favorite prime number, because I feel it gets overused. 5 doesn't get enough attention as a prime number, and 3 is too obvious; 2, on the the other hand, is too showy. I mean, isn't it enough of a distinction to be a prime number without having to be an even number, too?

7. Far, far back in the recesses of my childhood lies the beginning of a recurring dream, in which I find levels and levels of extra rooms under the church I grew up in. There are all sorts of odd statues, artifacts, sculptures, and parents of Sunday school classmates with the bodies of giant tarantulas. Going downstairs is more interesting, but after having this dream for about ten years, I finally discovered that if you climb up through the attics, you'll come out on a mountaintop where there's awesome snowboarding.

I, as usual, will decline to tag anyone.

Detailed knitting updates will have to wait for the weekend, but suffice it to say I'm on a manic knitting streak and I'm wearing my arms out trying to finish up a gift. You'll get to see it once the recipient has seen it first.

I'm going to my first SnB tonight- wish me luck!

Infodump!

I moved the yarn pile from the living room into my bedroom today. (Apologies to PSD, who was probably having a quiet moment in his office while I was doing this upstairs. I didn't keep dropping things intentionally, I promise.) As I relocated, I also took a detailed count of what was in the pile, and I came up with:

19 works in progress
179 balls, hanks, skeins, and blobs of yarn

Not as bad as I feared. It helped that there is no longer a frog pond: I threw all that stuff away. Thrift, shmift. Ripping out old sweaters is a pain, and for cheap cotton, it's totally not worth it.

Instead, I am now reveling in my pile of indulgence yarn, and hoping I can make it last a while. Here, friends, is where those forty yarn blobs were added:


Merino Sei. This almost doesn't count, since it was marked down from $8 to $3 per ball. I wouldn't feel guilty about it, except that I pounced on the opportunity and bought enough for two sweaters. I did not know that fate led me to just the right colors for this:

My Harry Potter House sweater. I am in a little bit of denial about the color of the stripe; I'm telling myself it's blue and not purple and that it really is in Ravenclaw colors (blue and bronze), so play along, okay? I am so looking forward to wearing this in the middle of July, when the Peony and I are going to our Hometown, which will be turned into Hogwarts Central for the night. I have already started praying that the man in a kilt and a poncho will show up. (Go read Book 4 again and come back when you get it.)

Moving forward. This...

...is the reason it's a bad idea to talk to me about how much yarn I buy. This was a revenge purchase. 19 hanks of fairly nice cotton. It's not much to look at now, but... well, I'm making up the sweater as I go, so it may not be much to look at ever. Just don't tell that to the evil person who hounded me about my yarn investments. (He, of course, has been spending my annual yarn budget on woodworking tools.)

In moments of happiness and sale-price hypnotism, there was also this:

(Sierra and Silky Wool)

...and this...

...the A-squared sweater, so named for the angora and alpaca yarn it's made from. This sweater is partially knit from the stash; the angora was a birthday present from the Peony. The alpaca, on the other hand, was a problem. If her book had come out sooner, I might have heeded the Harlot's advice: don't stand by the counter too long. 600 glorious yards of undyed superfine alpaca? Of course I had to get two colors. It's doubled up in the sweater to match the worsted-weight angora.

I do have exactly one guilt-free item, knit entirely from the stash:

The Mermaid sock. It's one of Lucy Neatby's patterns in Cool Socks, Warm Feet, and I love it. I changed the heel and the toe, of course, because I can't follow a pattern to save my life. But I really like the way the pattern works with the stripes. At the hospital, though, they apparently thought it was dangerous:



...because it came back to me in a biohazard bag. Maybe the size 0 needles scared them.

Now, gentle reader, I am off to eat dinner. And after that, I'm going to pick up a project from my pile. Between all the sweaters, afghans, socks, and stuffed animals on my WIP list, I suppose I shouldn't have any trouble finding something interesting to knit- in theory.

Battles and wars

Some of you may have noticed that it's been several weeks since I posted anything on any of my blogs. I am glad to report that I am making my way, slowly but surely, out of the blog silence. With any luck, my life will decide to be less absolutely maddeningly crazy, making it possible for me to become acquainted with the internet again.

What have I been doing in the meantime? Well... falling off the stash wagon. In a big way. I didn't even make it all the way through Lent. There are times in life, I feel, that require comfort yarn no matter what previous resolutions one might have made, and I hit several of those times. I think, though, that my LYSs (both of them) are partly to blame: they have been putting things on sale especially to tempt me. I mean, Malabrigo and Koigu PPPM at 50% off? How am I supposed to resist that?

While the stash wagon was rolling off into the sunset, the WIP wagon was not far behind it. I've been on something of a sweater kick lately, and I've been starting one with pretty much every new yarn purchase. Alas, I have not been in the mood to finish things, so I have- wait, let me count- four sweaters on the needles (I think it's just four, I could be wrong) and still no more actual wearable sweaters than I had a year ago. But boy, knitting sweaters sure is fun!

However! I am not giving up! I'll be relocating the yarn swamp soon (from the living room to my room, since roomie has moved on), and when I do, I will update the yarn stats on the sidebar. Try not to look to shocked when I do. I think my yarn weight now exceeds my body weight, which is a strong statement coming from the woman who's eaten Cocoa Crispies for dinner for the past week. I'll be chasing the wagon down and hopping back on it, whether the other yarnoholics want me on board or not. And when I do, I'll flash my stash again and give a tour of my WIP pile, including such items as:

• A sweater or two- or three- or more
  
• Various half-hearted attempts at stashbusting
  
• More Ann and Kay-inspired thriftiness
  
• Evidence of total lack of thriftiness
  
• ...and some items that will come in handy on July 11

Stay tuned. You won't want to miss it. (Well, I don't want you to miss it, so come back anyway.)