G. Knerd

Considering I just graduated from college a few years ago (thus giving you some idea of how young I am), I have a relatively impressive yarn stash.  In volumetric terms, it’s about 18 cubic feet (roughly half a cubic meter, for you metric types), and that’s under pretty heavy compression.  The only reason it’s not double that size is because over the last few years I’ve done a few systematic cullings of synthetic or crappy yarn, so everything that’s left is at least Cascade 220 quality or higher, and I’ve also been on a yarn diet for more than three years.

Of course, “yarn diet” is a very flexible term when I  use it.  In theory, it was supposed to mean “knit from stash and stop buying new yarn, stupid”, but what it ends up meaning is “don’t go to the yarn store by yourself, but when someone invites you to come with them then you probably will end up buying something there.”  Or if you’re at a yarn store you’ve never been to.  Or if there’s a sale.  Or if you’re sure you know what you’re going to do with it.  Or if you need a reward to motivate you to get through something really crappy at work.

The end result is that it’s unclear whether my stash has grown or shrunk over the last few years.  Given that I’ve given away bags of yarn in that time frame, that realization alone is rather disturbing.

So on Saturday, I was forced to understand why the “yarn diet” wasn’t really working.  It started with this box from Knit Picks…

Which when opened up revealed  30 balls of the gorgeously soft and squishy yarn (Simply Cotton Organic Sport in Marshmallow) for my friend’s wedding blanket.  When I ordered it, I figured 30 balls would be enough (it’s 4,920 yards, for goodness sake!), but now I’m wondering if maybe I shouldn’t order 10-20 more…you know, just in case…

But then, upon taking that yarn out of the box, I also found the Elegant Edibles kit, with it’s own set of 14 balls.

This kit is my reward for surviving March.  Remember how I posted maybe twice the whole month?  I’m counting myself lucky that my head didn’t turn around backwards while my eyes imploded and my insides were sucked into a black hole.

…that’s just a lovely image, isn’t it?  Here, why don’t you look at the picture of the knitted fruit and vegetable bags instead of imagining that other thing:

All told, though, that’s 44 balls of yarn acquired in one day.  And, sure, I didn’t buy any yarn in the month or two before, so maybe that averages to less than one per day.  Except that, I went to the yarn store a few weeks ago with a couple friends, where there was also a sale, and may have walked out with some yarn for an imaginary sweater.  But even if we forget that particular purchase of yarn, and even if the things in the box were justified because it’s for a gift and a reward respectively, well…

…that still doesn’t explain this:

That’s right, the day after that box arrived I found myself in a yarn store, and I managed to pick up 5 skeins of Cascade 220 (and a pom-pom maker, inspired by the Yarn Harlot’s post).  And as soon as I walked out of the store, I realized…I have a problem.

So here it is – I’m really committed this time.  I’m on a yarn diet, and yes, that really does mean that I will not be buying any more yarn.  If that means I can’t go to any more yarn stores, so be it.  If that means I have to find different rewards for my difficult projects, oh well.  Until my stash is of a reasonable size – which we’ll say is roughly 12 cubic feet, when it will fit in the one giant tub I have without overflow or major compression – I will not buy any more yarn.

Unless, you know, I need more yarn for the wedding blanket.  Because I’m actually really worried that five thousand yards might not be enough…

…Monkey Kitty will find it.

It’s like he has a sixth sense about where to find knitting and related supplies, and I swear he must have some kind of extreme instinctual imperative telling him to “Destroy!  Maim!  Kill!  Bitebitebite!”  I’d say he could smell the animals that were involved in making the yarn (see exhibits A and B) except that he also seeks and destroys polyester (exhibit C).  I haven’t given him the opportunity to get at any cotton yarn (yet, although the wedding blanket will be 100% cotton), but something tells me he’d be an equal opportunity yarn attacker.

A few weeks ago, I started another pair of go-everywhere-while-doing-anything socks.  This is what they looked like right after casting on.

(Also, I’d just like to point out that I’m giving Deborah Norville another try here.  I’ve got yet another set of a different colorway in my stash as well, so here’s hoping this one works out better than the last…)

Apparently, I forgot to put the knitting away properly (it was in a bag, but not out of Monkey Kitty’s reach).  In the morning, this is what I found:

A close up of the yarn under Monkey Kitty’s feet:

Notice that both balls of yarn are on this floor of the house, near the table (one is actually wound quite effectively over, under, and around several chairs as well).  That doesn’t really explain why there’s yarn going here:

Or why my knitting is here (almost hidden by the jacket):

Or why the yarn got wound around the stair posts at the top of the stairs before winding its way back down:

And yet, even then, all that was recoverable.  Sure, I had a lot of yarn wound around the outside of the balls, which was annoying, but overall the damage was actually rather superficial.

Then Monkey Kitty upped the stakes.

I had this pair of socks in a bag in my purse, which I apparently didn’t zip closed last night.  Quietly, sneakily, Monkey Kitty took the knitting out of my bag and hid it (note: he didn’t pull the yarn out of the bag until after we left for work, thus having all day to play with it).

On the way home, the Blanket Thief and I were talking about how my purse was much lighter than it normally was, and since neither of us could remember taking anything out of it, we were pretty sure who the culprit was and what we’d find when we came home.

At first glance, it might not look like there’s even anything wrong here – there’s barely any extra yarn pulled out at all.  But this time Monkey Kitty took a more subtle approach to his knitting destruction:

That’s the current state of the once-neat balls of yarn.  Somehow they both still seem to work as center pull balls, although the yarn now comes out the side of the ball instead of the top, but they’re about twice as big as they used to be and seriously more disordered.  And even then, I would just shrug it off and keep going, except…

Monkey Kitty took out the cable on the needle too.  I think we can conclude only one thing from this: Monkey Kitty has declared War on Knitting.  In between bouts with the scratching post, that is.

You know that feeling you get, when you’re really, really close to finishing a project, how you feel like you can’t put it down until it’s done?

Yeah, I’m there.  I don’t think I’ll get much done tonight, but I expect to have a pair of socks before I fall asleep.

Also, the hourglass pattern on Knitty?  Totally just flies by.  I swear, I feel like I just started these socks yesterday.  Although, like all patterns I knit from, there are plenty of modifications I made to the original.  When I post about the finished pair, I’ll do my best to call out the differences in case anyone wants to go down the crazy path I’m on instead of the well established original.

Every now and then, I’ve been having the Blanket Thief “try on” the cARGHdigan to see if the arm holes are big enough.  Generally, this process looks something like this:

(I had a better picture, but the Blanket Thief forbid me from posting it.  If he ever pisses me off, though…)

Given that the needle I’m using isn’t exactly long enough to go all the way around his shoulders, “trying on the cARGHdigan” translates into “Honey, stand still while I wrap this knitting around your arm.  What do you think?  Is it cutting off circulation?  Can you still feel your fingers?”

A few days ago, however, we made the transition from “not even close” to “really, actually almost there.”

Now, I have this idea for how I want the shoulders to work, and it involves using short rows to build up the knitting directly below the neck such that the back angles down from the neck to the arm holes, and then knit the front sides a bit longer than the back so that the seam at the shoulders actually falls towards the back and follows the line of the body.  It’s something I’ve noticed in store bought sweaters, but not so much on hand-knitted ones (so, of course, I had to try the way no one else uses…).

I did some quick calculations for how many stitches I wanted in the neck vs. each side, decided to do 8 rows, skipping an extra 10 or 11 stitches at each turn, which would ultimately give me 42 shoulder stitches on each side and 30 stitches at the neck.  Thus committed, I started merrily knitting away until I reached this point:

Each bit of red indicates somewhere that I’ve ended a short row, so at this point I’m about six rows into this shaping.  It was at this point that I thought to myself, “You know, I probably want to have the same number of stitches on the sides of the back as I do on the sides of the front…”

It amazes me how oblivious I am to the obvious sometimes…

Practically holding my breath, I dropped everything to count how many stitches were on the needles, feverishly hoping that the number was somewhere between 39-45, because I was pretty sure I could make any of those numbers eventually work.  Imagine my surprise when I came up with exactly 42 stitches.

I didn’t believe it either.

Four recounts of both sides later, though, it was clear that somehow the Knitting Fates had allowed me to pick the exact right number on the back to correspond to what I’d already done on the front.  It was an amazing, amazing moment, made even better when I realized that 42 was, in fact, the answer to life, the universe, and everything.

My best friend from college is getting married in September.  Not only have I repeatedly said that I’ll help her out with whatever she needs (she lives in Ohio and the wedding is in Seattle, so there’s a lot of help needed), but at her bridal shower I might have said the words, “So…would you prefer a hand-knitted blanket, or a gift card/something off your registry?”

Being the lovely person that she is, she said, “Well, I have plenty of people who can buy me stuff, but when it comes to knitting…”

I asked, “Okay, would you want something more heirloom/traditional, or something crazy?”

And she said, “Whatever you want to knit, I’ll love.”

Which…wasn’t as helpful as I’m sure she intended it.

So now I have to figure out what I want to knit (not easy), acquire the yarn (easy), and then somehow knit the entire thing in the next five months (depending on pattern, medium difficulty).  I’ve got a bunch of patterns queued up on Ravelry so that I don’t loose track of them, but I don’t know if I’m really in love with any of them.

Any thoughts?  Any blankets you’ve made (or been eyeballing)?  I seem to be leaning towards traditional with a medium difficulty level, but at this point I’m open to any and all suggestions.

Also, there has been progress on the cARGHdigan – I’m winging the shoulder shaping at the moment.  When I get to a point that’s easier to photograph (or maybe just manage to take a pic of the Blanket Thief trying to try it on), I’ll post more about how that’s going.