Happy September 29!

I MADE IT!

I went two solid months without casting a new thing on. Not socks. Not slippers. Not hats or scarves or mittens or sweaters or vests.
Not.
One.
Thing.

*snoopy dance*

And of course, I celebrated by casting on two things.












This is some pink worsted-to-bulky wool which has been marinating in my stash for, um, well, let's see.
*gets out calculator*
*performs complex math*

Yeah. Forfreakinever. That's how long. 13 skeins, 87 yards each, taking up a lot of space. All I ever wanted to do with this was a simple stockinette vest. No frills. Just knitting.

So I cast it on, and with a gauge of 4 stitches to the inch on size 10s, it whips up quick. That's about 2.5" of the back, knit this morning while I loafed for as long as it took to watch last night's Mad Men episode on demand. (Roger's an ass. I hate Jane. Pete is mean.)

This project will live on my desk for a while. Here's my theory on this one. I've been keeping plain socks on my desk, and socks in my purse as my travel knitting. With only one sock OTN now (woo hoo!), I'll carry that in my purse and leave some other plain, simple knitting on my desk to work while I dictate revision letters and read slush. And I need to clear out drawer space currently occupied by this pink wool. Hence, a new desk knitting project is born.

But you know what I've really been longing to cast on....
---drumroll----

The Kyoto!












Oh, baby, how gorgeous is that. Look at that sheen, that halo. I think I'm in luuuuuurve. This yarn feels like a dream.

I cast on the sleeve, ignoring the directions -- well, not ignoring them precisely. More like, I looked at them, said, "Nope. Not doing it that way," and cast on something different. So I did pay enough attention to the directions to decide to throw them out. That's not exactly ignoring, is it?

Right. Semantics. Now that I've knit three inches of the cuff, I reckon I'd better go figure out what I'm doing here. I don't want to get caught in my usual cycle, which as we know goes like this:

1. Scorn the pattern with much harrumphing.
2. Knit blithely without doing any math or planning.
3. Realize what a disaster I'm making.
4. Keep knitting anyway.
5. Realize the disaster is failing to magically self-correct.
6. Frog it.
7. Do just enough bad math to have to repeat these steps indefinitely.

But not with this yarn. This yarn has a high mohair content. I'd forgotten what that meant until I started knitting with it this afternoon. So now that I've remembered, three inches into my knitting-on-the-fly highwire act, I'm going to pause and redraw the pattern and calculate my increases, and all that good stuff, and then I'm going to double and triple and quadruple check my numbers, because DANG it I DO NOT WANT TO RIP THIS BACK. EVER.

(Bonus points to anyone who remembers those pink needles.)
(No, I haven't found my addis yet.)

FO: Sockotta Socks

Take a close look at those toes. There's just the thinnest slice of green there, where I kitchenered the toes closed. It's a perfect match on the stripes, in fact, and even the jogs in the striping come in exactly the same spots all up and down the socks.

And yes, the length of the legs and feet is identical, to the eighth-inch.

That's the best thing I can say about the Sockotta. Crissy, if you're out there, I bet you would also appreciate the striping in this yarn. You share my obsession with matching feet.

I have another skein of Sockotta in Christmas red. I've decided that eventually, when I get around to it, I'll double the yarn and knit dish cloths as Christmas grab bag gifts. This yarn would be great for scrubbing pots. It's got that stringy, kitchen-cotton feel to it.

So that's another FO in the 2008 column before my self-imposed ban on new projects ends. I'm debating my weekend knitting. Fulmar's sleeves have an error a few rows back -- and, remarkably, I managed to duplicate the error in both sleeves. So I may tink that. Or I may try to finish the last pair of socks currently OTN -- the Hand Painted Yarn Co socks. I'm on the second sock, but not far into it, so finishing is probably not within reach.

Anyone else fighting massive allergy attacks right now? I can't hear or breathe. Thank you, Mother Nature. Allergy medicine seems to improve things only in that it knocks me out so that I'm no longer conscious of how miserable I am. I'm having a hard time focusing, and this may turn out to be a knitting weekend if only by default because any other activity feels beyond my reach.

Farewell, Summer of Sleeves

I blinked, and the summer was over.

This was going to be the summer of sleeves, the summer in which I dedicated myself to knitting six sleeves on three sweaters-in-progress. I declared it so around the end of May, and then promptly set about knitting two brioche berets, two pairs of mittens, some socks, a vest -- just about everything EXCEPT sleeves.

Is it any wonder that my driving determination lately has been to recapture my focus? I've been living a butterfly's life, flitting from task to task with no plan and little comprehension of my own personal butterfly effect. This is highly atypical behavior for me. And I can't say I like it.

But the truth is, I hadn't even realized how bad it had gotten until we were at the editing retreat in August, and one of my friends made a gentle joke at my expense about unfinished manuscripts lingering on my desk. Dammit, she was right. My lack of purpose and plan has led to lingering, unfinished business in every corner of my life.

These things don't happen all of a sudden, of course. It's not like one day you're driven to succeed and the next, you're coasting. Instead, I found myself jiggling my schedule to make room for things like tv -- and that should have been a big warning sign in and of itself. I bet I haven't averaged five hours of tv a week over the course of my life. So why would I suddenly need to stop everything to watch American Idol, of all ridiculous things? And why would I skip a trip to the gym in order to do so?

I know why I did that. There were reasons. We all go through times when the urge to play ostrich swamps other concerns.

But since returning from Goat Rock, I've been taking stock and pulling my head out of the sand. Just as the change from focused to unfocused didn't happen in an instant, the return to focus is also taking some time. I started by reprioritizing my workload. I took inventory, set up a schedule, made goals. I created ways to hold myself accountable.

And I knit some damn sleeves.

Anyway.

So what's next? Right now, I'm working on finishing the Sockotta ribbed socks and the Fulmar sleeves. On Monday, I get to cast on something new, and that "something" will be a sweater from that purple Kyoto.

By that time, I expect I'll have finished the Sockotta socks -- or they'll be very close. That will leave me with one pair of socks OTN, and that's where I'll keep that number. I'll keep one plain sock on my desk, as always, to knit when I'm dictating or reading. My other knitting time will go toward finishing things in progress and toward Banff.

Banff is an easy sweater which won't take a lot of thought. Knitting the Veronik Avery halter vest this summer reminded me how much I enjoy making simple fabrics with just a bit of design interest in the shaping. So I'll have Banff, and Catherine Parr will be wearable before the end of the year, and Fulmar will continue to be the project I knit when I have time for something a bit more challenging.

I'll finish Catherine Parr, the Fulmar sleeves, and the new Kyoto sweater before the end of the fall. And that means we've moved from the summer of sleeves into the fall of finishing.

Oh, Snap!

Someone out there is shaking her fist at this picture right now. Heh. We're not racing or anything, but I know she wants to finish her Catherine Parr sleeves, too. So we'll call this photo extra motivation.

I'm really glad to have these sleeves done. Cascade 220 is a dependable, reliable yarn, but it isn't all that glamourous. Now that the sleeves are done, I'm going to knit something softer for a while to break up all that Peruvian crunch. The skin on my fingers needs a rest. I'm starting to develop a callous on my index finger from the yarn, and no amount of lotion seems to help with the dryness.

Still churning along in my no-new-projects groove. I left for San Francisco on July 29, and that's also the last day I cast on something new, a pair of plain socks perfect for the airplane. The embargo is in effect until September 29, two months later.

And I feel like this is a worthwhile experiment. I'm making progress on outstanding projects despite not having a lot of knitting time. I think I'm down to 6 projects OTN, which is as low as it's been in quite a while. And of those projects, I have two pairs of socks, both of which are on the second sock now, and neither of which is all that exciting. Catherine Parr, which now just needs a yoke and some reknitting on the hem. Fulmar, a forever project, and the cabled cardigan which has been in almost perpetual time-out. And the felted bag, which is rough felting wool, irritating to the touch, which I almost have to bribe myself to work on.

In other words, I'm not feeling that any of the current projects are at the top of the queue, yearning for my attention, for various reasons. But I will chug onward until the 29th, because these are all projects I'd like to finish.

And then on the 29th? I have something planned for that gorgeous Kyoto. 'Nuff said.

Holy. Crap.

I haven't counted up all the yarn yet. I've merely counted up everything I can reach -- minus the organic hand-dyed homespun that was a gift from author Nathalie Gray, which I can't count properly because I don't know the yardage.

There are at least two more boxes of yarn that I can't reach. As far as I can remember, anyway. I know I have some raspberry pink boucle that's in there somewhere, and some natural aran wool -- I'm dead sure they're not packed together, which means at least two more boxes of yarn yet to count.

And without those two boxes, my current yardage total stands at

::drumroll::
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92,519 yards

FO: Dale Olive Socks

I kind of like this new focus on finishing things. I like it that I now only have two pairs of socks OTN. Really, one is enough. But I can live with two.

Yarn: Dale Baby Ull in Olive Green
Needles: Crystal Palace 1.5US double points
Pattern: One of my favorites, the ribbed baby cable from Charlene Schurch's Sensational Knitted Socks.

Notes:
Not much to say that I haven't already said. This yarn is wonderful. One of my perennial favorites for socks -- durable, colorfast, washable, and incredibly comfortable to wear.

The Stash Logging Project

I've photographed every bit of yarn in this house. I've made notes about all of it. I've uploaded maybe a third of it into Ravelry. It's a start.

I don't know how much more yarn I have in storage, but I'd guesstimate that I've processed about three-quarters of the stash so far. The rest is in unreachable boxes and will have to wait until it's time to move. My plan is to pull out the yarn and set it aside as I'm loading the truck to move. I have a couple of boxes of wool sweaters that are too small for me now, and I think I ought to pull those aside, too. I just want to bag all the wool with sachets to protect against insects. You know how those storage places can be.

I have to start repacking the yarn tomorrow, or maybe tonight. It's EVERYWHERE. The hard part will be deciding what to keep close to hand, and what to send to storage. I can't even begin to wrap my mind around that decision now! It's like freaking Sophie's Choice!

A Peek Inside Pandora's Boxes

Ahem. This is so unexpected. I don't have a speech prepared. Thank you to the members of the academy, to --

Oops. Wait. Different award. ;)

Thanks, Knit and Run. It was a surprise to pop over to your blog this morning and see that you'd nominated me! I also love your blog!









In Other News





















I pulled out a few bins of yarn from my storage room at the family business. We sold that building, as some of you know, and I have to make other storage arrangements now. I'm not sure what I'm going to do. We haven't found a new property to move into yet -- we had a deal in place last week, but it flamed out in rather spectacular fashion earlier this week. So I've been trying to cobble together alternate arrangements. It's not going well.

In the meantime, I have to figure out what is in that storage room, exactly, in preparation for moving. I know I have several thousand books. An old couch and a desk. And, of course, my knitting stash.

That picture up there represents about half my stash, about 20,000 grams of yarn strewn across the corner of my living room. I'm documenting it as I go through it and bag it for storage. (Most of it was just tossed in the bins without much thought to proper storage.) This is partly an exercise in futilty because I can't even get to all the boxes with yarn in them. But I figured I could take a stab at it as long as I have to sort through the stash anyway.

I don't have time for this project now, but I also don't have a choice. The clock is ticking. We have to be out of the building by a certain date, and it's not negotiable. There are a lot of problems I can't solve now -- or, I should say, can work on endlessly without solving -- but this particular project has the advantage of being measurable and finite. It needs to get done at some point in the next month, and it at least gives me the illusion of progress.

By the way, in case you're trying to work it out, there's enough yarn in that photo alone for 14 sweaters, one afghan, and various scarves/hats/etc. There's only one skein of sock yarn in the lot -- my sock yarn is stored separately. In any event, this might help explain why lately I've been mentioning that I have enough yarn now. Even by my standards, it's enough.