Panic: The Realisation of Christmas Closeness

OH MY GAWWWD!

Only 73 days until Christmas!

ONOES!

Get a grip, Ken, get a grip.

That's just over 10 weeks for knitting everything up. Which means I have to find that second ball of Madeleine Tosh, STAT! For the blue cowl.
I have to tink back a row of 224 stitches on the red cowl to find where I made a mistake.
I have two, count 'em, two Ameeta scarves to finish, and one of them has to be ripped back at least 20 rows or more, because, you know, I skipped a row. I'm such a dunce sometimes.

And am I at home, knitting my fingers to the bone?
Not no, but HELL NO!
I'm at an internet cafe, writing a blog post, reading Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (on line), and swilling cola like it was, well, cola.

Where are my priorities? Where is my Calvinist work ethic? Where is my Stephanie Pearl-Mcphee-tenacity?

Out the window, apparently.

I'll get to the knitting. If it gets done in time for the holidays, so much the better. And if it doesn't, then I'll hand over an unfinished garment, and if the recipients are upset with that, then they don't deserve the fruit of my labour.

Now, back to Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.

Rhinebeck or. . .

Bust.

I won't be making it to Rhinebeck Sheep and Wool Festival this year.

Alas.

Think of the hit my yarn stash is going to take because I won't be there to sop up new yarns from different places.

No, don't look at earlier posts, detailing all the yarn I bought in August in Seattle, none of which has been knit yet. Don't look over there, la la la la la, look over here. Oooh, shiny!

Seriously, though, I've got a few things going on that weekend, like a Dar Williams concert, and I'm going to Provincetown on Saturday to help a friend deliver cupcakes from his business. And, true, I now have 21 bins of yarn sitting in my room, taking up most of the free space there. I really do need to start knitting my stash. My friend Erick has threatened an intervention in my yarn buying, so I guess it's getting pretty dire.

But I did so want to wander Rhinebeck, and see all the cool yarns there, and look at the alpacas and dream of taking one home with me, and eat maple cotton candy. Not this year. Next year. Because by next year I'll have run out of yarn!

It's good to dream.

Twenty-four Inchs, or Bust!

Whenever I start a new circular project that isn't a hat, my friend Valaree reminds me that the Sainted Elizabeth Zimmerman insisted that no one needs circular needles that have a cable longer than 24 inches. I do not know if this is true (and I suppose, with my mad librarian skillz, I could ascertain if it were), but I suppose it is. That said, what the hell am I doing knitting a cowl (I almost typed, "scowl") on 24 inch circulars? There are well over 200 stitches of worsted weight Madeleine Tosh cast on for this project, and the damned thing is all bunched up together. Elizabeth Zimmerman may well have been able to knit hundreds of stitches on 24 inches, but I, alas, am no Elizabeth Zimmerman. I look at it and have a hard time getting a sense of what it's supposed to look like, and how many iterations of the pattern I'd like to do (the pattern calls for five, but I'm using a heavier weight than the pattern calls for, so I'm thinking three). Elizabeth Zimmerman, you may be the patron saint and goddess of knitting, but 24 inch circs are not always the ideal needles for every project!

There. I feel better now, having got that off my chest. I mean, seriously, what would I do with a sweater knit in the round in bulky yarn (my favourite sweaters!)? I doubt I could get almost 300 stitches of bulky weight yarn on 24 inch circs. What, never! No, never! And we won't go further with the lyrics from that song.  What's sauce for the goose may well be sauce for the gander, but not for the swan, the hen, nor the pheasant. What worked for Saint Elizabeth will not necessarily work for me. I shall knit future projects on circular needles I deem appropriate, and if that causes Elizabeth to spin in her grave, well, we'll then consider the soil well aerated.

I feel so relieved.

Here is my Milanese Loop cowl, for Siobhan (the pattern is free and can be found on Ravelry). The yarn is Madeleine Tosh, Betty Draper's Blue, Limited Edition.

You can see how the poor thing is all bunched up and unhappy on that 24 inch circular needle.
But I am loving what I can see of it.

Monogamy

I am not a monogamous knitter. At any given time, I'll have two, three, fourteen projects on the needles. Sitting here, in the internet cafe, I can think of at least nine eleven twelve projects I've got going. There's Libby's scarf, my scarf, Paul's scarf. Then there's Kristen's cowl, Siobhan's cowl, and the scarves for Grace and Maddy. Miz Kitty's big alpaca shawl. Corey's scarf that never ends. I don't even want to think about the lace shawls I've got going, from which I've taken a little "vacation". And all the projects I'm planning and for which I've bought yarn. No, I'm not even going to go there.

Part of the situation is that when something gets too big and doesn't fit easily into my backpack, it becomes at-home-knitting, and I spend very little time at home, which means that I don't work on these projects very often. Or lace things that require thought and attention and counting. I can't bring those to knit-night, because I can't participate in the conversations around me, because I'm too busy making sure I'm knitting two together and making yarn overs in the right spots. Which might be why I make so many scarves and hats: they're mobile! And, being the yarn whore that I am, I want to start using the yarn that I buy right away, so I often buy needles to go with it so I can start working with it on the train trip home from the yarn store. Which might explain why I have nine or twelve size 6 circular needles, all 16 inches. Oi.

But now I am deep in the throes of my holiday knitting. I have decided, for the sake of my sanity, that I will only knit one project at a time. I will finish, in some order, the projects I've got going (since most of them are holiday presents of one sort or another), and not drive myself crazy. Of course, I do get a little bored sometimes (the knit-one-purl-one of yet another Noro Striped Scarf is putting me to sleep!), but I am persevering. In fact, I've got about another 50 rows to go on that damn striped scarf before I can bind it off. After this I'll finish Siobhan's cowl. Then Kristen's. Then Grace's and Maddy's scarves. Somehow I have to get Miz Kitty's shawl in there, too.

Monogamous knitting is a challenge to me, but maybe I'll get everything done on time this year. Unlike last year. No, don't let's think about last year. Quelle debacle! (That's French.)

Oh, and I don't even want to think about the baby sweaters I need to start. I wonder what kind of yarn I'll buy for those? Or maybe I should just shop my stash.

I had to buy two more bins this past weekend for my ever-growing yarn collection. I am now up to 21 bins. I know that some people have a lot more yarn than I do, but I can only knit so fast, and I don't always remember what's in the bins (yeah, yeah, gotta get it all catalogued). My friend Sue came up with a twelve step programme for yarn buyers, and with due respects to AA, I offer it here.

1. We admitted we were powerless over yarn, that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity, then quickly dismissed this idea.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care and knitting of natural fibres as we understand them.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of our freezers (and bins, and closets, and underwear drawers, and crawl spaces).
5. Admitted to God, but not to ourselves, or to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs, because we have none.
6. Were entirely ready to have friends remove all these remnants and then remembered item #2 and hid everything.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove. . . wait. . . humbly? Pshaw!
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends by sucking up to them with knitted fineries.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would require using any yarn that I wanted to keep for myself. Forever.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it. Said no knitter. Ever.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with yarn, as we understood it, praying only for knowledge of yarn's will for us and the power to carry that out. Then realising this is a giant FAIL.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to other knitters, and to practise these principles in all our affairs. Alas, affairs bite us in the ass, and so we turn to knitting.

Seattle Yarn Carnage: Part the Third

Today I did not buy yarn.

But I wanted to.

On our tour of yarn stores in the Seattle area, we pulled into Port Gamble, and the very first store I saw was a yarn store! The Artful Ewe was sitting there, with yarns on the bench outside, and the door wide open. Luckily, we encountered this store today, because it's only open on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. Because all the other days the owner, Heidi Dascher, is dying yarn. Or spinning, or weaving, or doing other things.

And I didn't buy yarn. Mostly because I shot my financial wad earlier in the week, and couldn't afford it. However, Heidi allowed me to pick out what I wanted and put it in a bag. I gave her my information, and in a couple weeks I will call her and she will ship it to me! All the yarns I chose were hand-dyed, and I chose blues, greens, purples, oranges and blacks. Gorgeous wools and wool-silk blends.

Since I can't show you my yarn (since it's still at the store), here are some shots of the store.

The Artful Ewe, Port Gamble, WA.

These are the yarns from which I chose the skeins the store is holding for me. I didn't want to leave! And I didn't want to stop, but somehow, I decided enough was, alas, enough. But I am very much looking forward to getting my skeins of yarn next month.

Seattle Yarn Carnage: Part the Second

Today we went to Debbie Macomber's A Good Yarn Shop (the store's website isn't up yet, so I am unable to provide a link). The address is 1140 Bethel Avenue, #101, Port Orchard, WA. There were a lot of wonderful yarns, a lot of Cascade products (I love Cascade, but I am able to get it back home in Boston, so it isn't on my list of things for which to look). But there were some local goodies that caught my eye and emptied my wallet.

The first yarn in today's carnage is a beautiful wool, from Oregon. Imperial Yarn, this is 4 ounces, 220 yards, of pure wool. I noticed, while on the website, that this yarn can be found in nine different stores in Massachusetts. I've never seen it before, and I've been to at least four of the stores listed. No matter. It's in my stash now, and I like it.

The next two yarns are a 50-50 mix of silk and bison down. From The Buffalo Wool Co., this lace weight yarn caught my eye, and I just had to have it! There were other colours I would like to have gotten, but it's an expensive item, so I limited myself to only two skeins. The band says, "From the downy undercoat of the American bison comes the surprisingly soft, seriously strong fiber we call 'Buffalo Gold'." This particular iteration of their yarn is called Sexy. It surely is!

Next up in utter fabulousness is Blue Moon Fiber Arts Woobu. This yarn is 60% merino and 40% bambu. I am not a big fan of bamboo, or even bambu, yarns, but this stuff was so soft and amazing that I couldn't leave it alone. This colourway is called A Hazy Shade of Blue, and it is smoky, with black and grey highlights. So pretty. I got two skeins so I could make a vest, even though I don't much like making V-necks. The photograph does not do it justice.

Finally, I bought a skein of Cascade 220. Obviously this is something I can get this yarn at home, but this is a colourway that I haven't seen in a long time. I had started a sweater in Cascade Pastaza in this colour a long time ago, but the sweater was infested with moths, and I don't think I'll ever be able to finish it. I bought this skein in order to be able to order it as worsted wool, because I still like it, even thought the wool does not have the sheen of the Pastaza. I'll live.

These are the yarns I bought on the second day of Yarn Carnaging in the Pacific Northwest. I hope to get a few more yarns before I return to Boston.