Getting A Handle On Things

When I first began to knit, I said that I would only work on one project at time and that I wouldn't have a stash.

And then the Universe bitch slapped me.

I'm trying to get a handle on things. Right now, I am very focused on getting all the holiday knitting done. I've finished knitting the stuff that's due on Christmas day, and now I'm focusing on the stuff that needs to be done by mid January. I don't know if I'm going to finish the sweater. But everything else will be done.
Probably will be done.
Might well be done.
I think I'm done for.

Stash. What is it about new yarn? The smell? The colours? The jumbled, jubilant plethora of wooly goodness? I have so much damn yarn in my house I could open a yarn shop. I see yarn in the yarn store and I see new projects, friends bundled up in warm woolies, gorgeous handknits falling off my needles as I finish binding off.

The reality is quite other. I have bins and bins and bins of yarn. I say there are 25 of them, but I really don't have an accurate count. I have acquired so much yarn this year that I need to buy a couple new bins. There's so much of it, and I am feeling a bit overwhelmed. I don't have any place to put it, and have actually sent six bins over to a friend's house to live in her basement. At least until I'm in a new apartment and have more storage space for my obsession.

I need to think of my New Year's resolutions soon. I need to assess how well I met the resolutions I made last year. I already know that I cannot promise not to buy yarn next year. I've already started saving up money for the New Hampshire Sheep and Wool Festival in May. And I've started putting aside some money for Rhinebeck in October.And then there's the Greater Boston Yarn Crawl in September. Maybe if I limit myself to just those three occasions next year? This year's promise not to buy yarn is already shot to hell, and good thing, too, since next week I'll be in Northampton, MA with some friends for a concert. Which means a trip to Webs. Well, worse things have happened to nicer people.

Who am I kidding? I saw some wonderful Arran weight yarn at a local shop, and the owner promised to order me some to make a sweater. And I want to make a traditional Irish sweater this year, in that wonderful lanolin-heavy cream-coloured Irish yarn. Yeah, I'm going to limit my purchases to just three festivals next year. I wonder if I will need to learn to read charts to make this sweater? Probably. Charts, like Estonian lace, scare the snot out of me. But if I make my quest to become a Knitter (as opposed to a knitter) then I reckon I'll have to learn how to read them.

O spite! O hell!