Guilty as Charged

Today I was chastised by my husband. I snuck out to a yarn store and gleefully raided their bargain bin. All skeins were $5! I was going to hide them when I got home but things got busy and I forgot and the husband spied a skein spilling out of my bag and it was all over.

He didn't care about the bargain bin and how I got five skeins of Rowan calmer (for $5!) or how I found a particularly soft alpaca/silk blend (for $5!). He didn't care that I found some great yarn that I just wanted to try out (for $5!). He just clucked disapprovingly after chucking a ball at me (thankfully yarn is soft).

He said, "But you promised!" Which made me think: did I really promise not to buy anymore yarn? Was I drunk? Why would I have made a promise that I am unwilling, perhaps incapable of keeping? I don't recall such a thing. Maybe I did but if I did (and I'm not saying that I did) I clearly did not mean it. I'm sure Bill promised Hillary that he would never cheat on her again and I'm sure both parties knew that promise was doomed from the get-go.

Maybe I could amend my promise: No more yarn buying for the rest of this month! It's Jan 25th and I can go 6 days without buying yarn. Just keep me away from the sale bin.

A Knotty Issue

Not knitty. I mean knotty. Why is it that every now and then I will come across a knot in a skein of yarn? The only reason I can come up with is this: the yarn company would lose money if they had to throw out any length of yarn that falls short of their stated skein length. So they knot these less-than lengths of yarn, skein it up, sell them full price and call the occasional knot an "industry standard."

Frankly, this irks me. I pay good money for a beautiful skein of yarn. I kind of expect the yardage stated on the label to mean uninterrupted length. Do I really hate weaving in ends? Yeah, that's part of it. But it's also the principle of the thing. 50 yards should mean 50 yards. Not 50 yards minus the 12 or so inches I'll need to weave in two extra ends per knot (not to mention the minor aggravation of doing so).

Maybe my frustration is misplaced. Maybe there's a good reason that I should expect a knot every now and then. Maybe the sheep labor union forbids the wasting of yarn thus necessitating knots in skeins. Humph. Blasted sheep.

Busy knittin'

Yesterday was my day off. I spent it ignoring my to-do list and knitted all day. I listened to a good audiobook, snuggled with Harry (my 14 year old Jack Russell terrier) and feverishly worked on my newest obsession.

It's the Chevron Scarf by Joelle Hoverson (in Last Minute Knitted Gifts). It looks complicated but in fact is elegant in its simplicity. The pattern is easy to learn and yet I still manage to make mistakes as I find I am easily distracted and counting requires some concentration. Thankfully, the pattern (and the yarn) is also quite forgiving and I can usually decrease/increase on the next row to make up for whatever I've forgotten on the crucial row beforehand. As an aside, this project is in a book entitled "Last Minute Knitted Gifts." Now I am not a quick knitter - I stubbornly knit English style since I have no control over tension when I knit Continental. But still, shouldn't this project be in the One Week version or maybe It Will Take About a Month if you have other things to do Knitted Gifts?

Regardless, it's fun and the colors in the Koigu yarn are gorgeous. Already I have cruised Ravelry and lusted after all the other yarns people have used for this project.

Originally I wanted to have this knit for my friend Ella's birthday. I'm just about halfway through but her birthday is only 5 days away. Poop. I hate being late. But maybe when she receives it, she won't mind.

Another sock and some stitchin' and bitchin'

OK, so this is really my first sock ever (to be cast on, that is - my second sock to be finished). It's in a worsted weight so it knits up faster but since I didn't have an intended recipient (i.e., it was going to be for me) it languished while the Christmas knitting took over my life.

Now that I'm finished (with the socks, not the Christmas knitting - alas), I think I'll give them to my friend Kyra - a belated birthday gift. I'm quite happy with the colorway - 10 plies of orange, yellow and grey. It reminds me of a glorious fall day - perfect colors for Kyra.

This is the sock I started to knit at Stitch DC's sock workshop this past December. My first knitting workshop in 10 years. How nice it is to have a real live person show me how to maneuver yarn and Marie (the shopowner) was fab. But even nicer was having some company with whom to knit. So last night I attended my first Stitch n' Bitch conveniently located two blocks from my favorite yoga class in DC. Yoga and then knitting - who could ask for a better way to spend my Thursday nights?