Staying the Course

I have yarn. Really, I have a lot of it. It may not be considered "a lot" to some people, but to me it is. I have recently admitted to myself the fact that my stash no longer fits in the three box system that I had going on. I have two 12 gallon plastic boxes that are full of yarn, plus one 19 quart box that is full of sock yarn. They are full. Can-hardly-close-the-tops-on-them-no-matter-how-hard-I-try kind of full. And up until this past week I was okay with that because, after all, I could still close them and the stash still fit into the three box system.

That was before I had to relocate the stash from the guest bedroom into the office for my mother-in-law's visit. I wanted to make sure that Anne had plenty of room in the closet to stow her stuff and that was not going to happen with all the yarn, knitting books, knitting bags and yarn winder and swift in there. Being the thoughtful daughter-in-law that I am, I moved all of that stuff into the office closet which will soon become Ailish's closet once she moves out of our room and into her room and the office becomes a joint tenant of the guest room. (There's a lot of moving going on here!)

I was in the process of moving the yarn and assorted knitting paraphernalia when I realized that I don't count certain yarns as a part of the three box system, though I really should. Case in point, the 10 skeins of Shine Worsted that was for a very short time the Cherry Bomb tank top from Big Girl Knits. Those 10 skeins are carefully wound up again and sitting in a clear project bag that hangs from the clothes rod. Right next to it, in their own clear project bags are 7 skeins of Reynolds Rapture and 6 skeins of King Tut Cotton. Why don't these 23 skeins count in the three box system? Because they didn't fit comfortably in the boxes at the time that I needed to put them in there so I didn't bother, plus this conveniently left me room in the boxes to purchase more yarn.

Clearly I have plenty of yarn to knit with, so why on earth did I spend 2 hours last night putting yarn into various online shopping carts and then closing the screens before purchasing anything? I was so darn tempted to buy yarn that I really don't need?

My remedy to this is to harness the power of Ravelry! I have my entire stash cataloged on the website and so I spent time going through each yarn to see what other people have made from it. This gave me a lot of wonderful ideas and I now have 18 projects in the Queue that have a specific yarn from my stash attached to them. There's no more excuses! I have yarn to knit with and patterns to make it into!

Now I'm all revved up and ready to go but have a few more projects on the needles than my Mommy Brain can handle. The challenge now is to finish the two socks that I'm working on before I can cast on for a new project.

This is my first toe up sock and it's being worked Magic Loop style. I'm really enjoying this process! The wedge toe fits my foot amazingly and the short row heel (another first for me!) is quick and easy. Last night I finished the first sock only to realize that my usual way of binding off was not going to cut it. I researched a few different ways of binding off and found the Sewn Bind Off to be perfect.

What I'm not loving is this particular yarn. It's Sockotta and I'm not liking the striping pattern. My OCD needs the stripes to have a pattern to them and it is not happening. Mom, on the other hand, thinks that it is great and has claimed the socks for herself.

For my next pair of socks with the short row heel I need to figure out how to not get holes in the heel. I picked up my wraps but still have holes. A little bit of research and I'll be set.

I'd also like to find how to do a short row toe. If the toe is as good as the heel it will make me a very happy knitter!!!







Lastly, this is the Moss Grid Handtowel from Mason Dixon. The yarn is Merlin Tristan that I got in the swap from Tammy and it is 100% linen. This has been a yarn that is hard for me to get used to. It doesn't have a great hand and all of my stitches look uneven and just plain wonky. Hopefully they'll even out with blocking.

A positive thought is that I had planned on purchasing enough linen yarn to make a curtain for a small bathroom window. That will not be happening, at least not with this type of yarn.