It’s Furious Balancing

I sorta/kinda vowed to make 2009 the Year of Shopping from the Yarn Stash.  Forgive me, for I have sinned.

Four lovely skeins of Dream in Color Groovy arrived the other day, but I have rationalizations at the ready.  I needed this yarn.  Really.  It’s for the current Service Knitting project for the Knitters for Obama group.

We’re making items for the Mattaponi Indian tribe in Virginia, and they requested items made from machine-washable yarn  in bright colors or earth tones.  Having no machine-washable wool in my Yarn Stash — except for sock yarn — I just had to do some shopping.

This is luscious stuff.  I don’t use crap yarn for my Service Knitting projects; I wouldn’t want to give anyone an item made from yarn that I wouldn’t wear myself.  So you see — I had to buy this yarn.  Good cause and all that.

This yarn is talking to me.  I don’t know how much longer I can hold out before I cast on a new WIP, but I’m attempting to discipline myself by finishing the first (boring, dark taupe, never-ending ribbing, worsted weight) hat I’ve started for this project.

We all know how well I do with the self discipline…

I collect the written word:  Books, obviously, but I also collect quotes.  The vast majority aren’t written down, really; they just stay in my (very fuddled) memory.

While cleaning up around the desk in my study, I found a piece of note paper that had the “petty and vindicative” quote about pain that I’d been searching for for years.  The quote, not the specific piece of paper.

My quote searching would have been much easier if I had remembered who said it — for some reason I was thinking H. L. Mencken when it was really W. Somerset Maugham. Big difference.

Anyway.  Ahem.  The “petty and vindictive” quote:

It is not true that suffering enobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering, for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.

It could have been Mencken…

1.  From Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address

[W]e reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience’s sake. And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: Know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.

2.  From Artyarn, Silk Rhapsody, in a color I can only describe as Quicksilver:

I’m fighting off a cold, so that’s as in-depth as my blog posting is going to get for today.

Sleep well, cats and kittens.  Tomorrow is a brand new world.

I’m currently sitting in one of the common areas of the HI Chicago Hostel, pounding on the laptop. Yeah, I know I haven’t talked about either my Chicago trip or my shiny new Dell (running Ubuntu).  I’ve been remiss.  Bear with me.

This is the Knitters for Obama Inauguration Weekend.  Right after the election, we started chatting in the Ravelry forum about a meet up in Chicago.  About 2 to 3 dozen of us are coming into town, some for just the weekend (me) and some for all four days – culminating in watching the festivities on Tuesday morning.

This is the online crowd I’ve been hangin’ with since the primaries, watching the debates on one screen and typing in chat on another.  A very good bunch indeed.

I rolled into town around noon, checked into the hostel, and spent most of the afternoon at Loopy Yarns sitting in their classroom area with other KFO-ers, knitting, buying yarn, chitchatting, and putting tags on the charity knitting hats we’re donating to the University of Chicago Medical Center’s cancer care unit.

Blackbunny (Carol of Black Bunny Fibers) was there signing copies of her new book, Knitting Socks with Handpainted Yarn.  Franklin was there, too!  I’m hoping some of his pictures make it up on his blog, since I didn’t take very many myself. 

Yes, I did buy yarn, but it’s SOCK yarn, and I have it on good authority that sock yarn doesn’t count as stash.  There was a very expensive skein of a silk-mohair blend — which is NOT sock yarn — but  I can’t recall the name of it now (and it’s in my room).  It was silver.  And very pretty.  And up by the cash register.  I blame the yarn fumes.  The place was heady with them.

Tomorrow we’re getting together for some sight-seeing, locations to be determined when we get an idea of how many of us are venturing forth.

Further bulletins as events warrant.

–Laiane

I finished the second Pagoda Sock, thereby avoiding the dreaded Second Sock Syndrome.  I was pretty motivated to finish them; I’d discovered I’m a Sock Knitting Addict and needed to start another pair within minutes of finishing my first pair.  I don’t think medication will help this.

So, without further ado, here are my First Ever Completed Pair of Socks That are Actually Wearable.

Pagoda Socks

I posted most of the project information in this post, so I won’t repeat it here.  The only mod to the pattern was my downsizing the needle from the heel flap downwards on the second sock.  I went down from a US size 2 to a US size 1.5  This was to tighten up some bagginess around the ankle and foot, and it did the trick.  So, yes, the socks are slightly different in size.   There are also some tiny gaps where I picked up stitches on the gusset.   I don’t care.  They’re finished.  They fit.  They’re the most comfortable socks I’ve ever worn.

I’ve already begun my second pair of “top-down with a heel flap” socks in some lovely self-striping yarn from Opal.  I’m not sure the stitch pattern I’ve chosen will work with the stripes, so pictures will be appearing another day.  Heck, I might even just knit them in plain vanilla stockinette and let the yarn do all the work.

The New Adventures of Queen Victoria

I want to keep my New Year’s Resolutions on the small side this year.  In addition to the flossing, in 2009 I hope to:

2.  Read The New Testament; and

3.  Shop from the yarn stash instead of buying more yarn.

Of those, Item No. 2 is perhaps the easiest.  Item No. 1 — flossing — is easier to blow off than Jesus.  Item No. 3 — cutting down on the Yarn Shopping — will be difficult, especially since I see it as a way to support the flagging economy.  It’s patriotic, dammit!  Buy yarn!  Buy luxury fibers from indie hand-dyers!  Yeah!

Speaking of hand-dyed yarn,  I want to share with you the 50/50 merino-silk blend I found at The Woolen Rabbit.  It’s called Opulence for a reason.

Click here for the extra-huge sooper-size picture.  It’s worth the bandwidth.  I promise.  The depth of color and shading in this yarn is nothing short of phenomenal.  Even my stashed Silky Malabrigo can’t hold a candle to this.  I want to make the Poinsettia cowl from the Winter Knitty with this, but I am dutifully finishing my second Pagoda Sock before I cast on the next project.

/sigh

The point of this, I suppose, is that I should Shop The Stash because I know there’s excellent stuff in there.   Really excellent stuff.  Malabrigo and Rowan and Dream in Color and Handmaiden Sea Silk and and and…

So much potential!  That’s the thing about knitters and stash yarn.  Having the yarn stay in skeins and hanks — instead of, like, actually knitting with it  — is the stuff of dreams.

We’ll see how it goes, I suppose.  I’m telling myself that I’m not forbidding myself from buying more yarn, just that I should pay more attention to what I already have stashed first.  AND, I tell myself, if I make room in the stash, I can acquire more yarn guilt-free!