Save Me from Myself!

I do not need more stuff. I do not need more stuff. I do not need more stuff -- including yarn?

This is the mantra I am supposed to be practicing until after our renovations this summer. We forced the kids to go through their books and toys and have dispersed and discarded much, much stuff. Meanwhile, I have added something like 40 skeins of yarn to my stash in 2 weeks. The latest is on the left. I kind of fell in to it at Knitty City yesterday and even Female Child (usually my yarn buying conscience) admited that I had to buy it for the Male Child. The yarn is Lorna's Laces Bee Stripe and Male child has a thing for the word "Bumblebee." (He does not have a thing for live Bumblebee's, just the word and concept of Bumblebee.) I was going to make him a pair of these using my newly acquired Palette yarns but then we stumbled in to Knitty City after Shabbat services and found the aptly named yarn. They will go on the needles as soon as I am finished with Plain Socks 2 and Female Child's Summer Socks.

On the Knitting front ...

Yesterday I turned the heel on the second Plain sock and and the first Summer Sock. There was a lot of walking (Plain sock) and blog surfing (Summer sock) done yesterday. Only 3 rows of Woven were knit but hey! 2 heels in one day! on thin sock yarn!

I also worked on my Dye-o-rama project. This is my attempt at making self-striping yarn without first warping the yarn in to a humongous skein. I suspect that I am not saving any time but ... time will tell. (Sorry, couldn't resist.)









I have also started washing all of our sweaters in preparation for bagging for summer. I do not usually wash and store sweaters -- they usually just ferment in place over the summer -- but the more time I spend with wool, the more likely I am to care for it properly. The storage -- in sweater bags (I think) is mainly to keep the construction dust off of them. I know that grit will get in to everything no matter how careful our contractor is. Since the zone of construction MUST be passed through in order to get from the front door to any room in the house, tracking the dust will be inevitable.

Below is a sweater that my mother-in-law knit for me many, many years ago. It is cozy and warm and gets much use over the winter. I will try to photograph the other sweaters as I wash them, one a night.