Homeless yarn

In the end, the homeless yarn ended up just getting crammed in the closet before bed last night. Living with your very own stash weasel teaches you (sometimes) not to leave yarn out in the open, unsupervised.

It's a mess, but at least it's a mess behind closed doors, for now. Hopefully tonight I'll be able to muster the energy to deal with making it neater. For someone who purports to like organization, I'm not very good at it.

And, just for the record, that was most certainly NOT my whole stash! Hee. No, what I showed you last night was (most of) the oddballs and remnants in my stash. Most of the real stash lives in my bedroom. It just got a nice new home in a dresser that my lovely husband was discarding. I'll admit, it is smaller than many stashes (no yarn rooms here!) but there's at least 13 pairs of socks, 2 sweaters, 3 shawls worth of yarn up there, plus all the random single balls that I have no idea what I should do with them. So there really is a stash.


Pye would like you to believe that she is decidedly NOT a stash weasel. "If I were a stash weasel, would I sleep instead of molesting Mom's Clapotis that's RIGHT UNDER OVER MY nose?" Don't believe the cute snoozing cat.

Good grief!

There has been major upheaval here at Chez Siercia. We've been changing rooms all around, finally acheiving my many years long dream of having a living room (with comfortable chairs! and nice light to read by!) that has no darn TV in the middle of it, gumming up the works. Now the tv is in it's own little room off the kitchen and it is very nice. I was so pleased to be able to sit and read while Mr. Man was off watching car racing.

The downside is that we're getting rid of the quite large entertainment center that we had for the tv in the living room. It's too big for the nw tv room, and new mr. LCD tv doesn't need all that space. BUT (and it's a big but, people), that piece of furniture has long held a chunk of the yarn in my life. I'm sure you know how much of mess this has created in my house.

So, yesterday, we moved the knitting books from the closet to the bookcase, because they're more presentable and organized. Oh, but since that space didn't just appear from mid air, first I had to find homes for the books that were on that part of the bookshelf. Thankfully, there were homes to be found, because I'm still on a crazy book culling kick. So did that first, then moved the books. They actually take up about the space I was expecting - slightly more than half a shelf on a good sized bookcase.

See?



Then, I made the big mistake. I started trying to sort the yarn in the closet of doom. After all, I had all the space with the books gone, right? Now the closet is less full, but much more full of mess.

See?



And there's still a whole lot of crap in my living room that is homeless.


The sad plight of yarn with no home. This isn't even all of it.

I swear, it's felt like every time I turn around I'm finding more damn yarn. While I know I shouldn't be complaining (after all, what's not to like about yarn, right?) I'm kind of starting to feel like my yarn owns me, instead of the other way around.

Anyone wanna come shop at my house?

In actual knintting news, one daffodil sock is finished, but since I've been feeling ick with the cold this week, I've been doing some brain dead Clapotis knitting.



This here? It's much bigger now. But my husband already thinks I'm weird for taking pictures of the closet, so I'll leave you with only a pic of the infant Clapotis instead of the toddler clapotis.

Finished!

Completed sock!


Close-up of the heel and gusset.

Finished mom's socks late on Monday. Of course, I've not managed to mail them yet, but I'm hoping I'll get them out tomorrow morning. I'm quite pleased with how they came out. The garter rib works nicely with the varigated yarn, and is a little more interesting than plain old 2x2 rig.

I spent the rest of Monday night (where "rest of" means I stayed up until nearly 2am) futzing with the daffodil socks. Suzanne, you were so right in your suggestion - ripping them down from the top simply did not work. I wasted a good 45 minutes or more trying, only got about halfway around the cast on edge before realizing it was hopeless. Were I smart, at that point, I would have done exactly what she suggested, threading a bit of thread through the stitches I wanted to capture, then cutting the socks where I wanted it. Instead, I cut and carefully pulled out the stitches, picking up the newly freed stitches very carefully (and slowly!) as I went.


Here one of them is after surgery waiting for some love.

Last night I picked out my stitch pattern for the new tops and got about half a repeat done on both socks. No pictures of that, since there's not enough there to be photogenic yet. I'm currently debating going up a needle size after the first half repeat to make the sock tops a little looser, to accomodate my tree trunk legs.

Last, but not least, Ms. Widget wonders if Mom is ever going to finish taking pictures so that she can sit on the couch again.

One day, one toe

Technically, I'm going to be finished my Mom's socks in time. Or I should be, since it's 2/19 and I only have the toe decreases to go, ends weaving and blocking left. It's only a technical victory, though, since I'm not going to see her tomorrow. We'll have to settle for the victory being that the socks will go in the post by her birthday, to arrive later in the week.

I found a lovely shawl pin on Etsy to go with the shawl for my friend. That arrived late last week, so if I'm truly organized, I'll get that packaged up tonight and in the mail as well. I hope she loves it.

After that, I move to continuing work on the mini-clapotis for my godmother, and re-jiggering my daffodil socks. They're plain jane stockinette now, and a bit shorter than I wanted. Turns out I have TONS of yarn left over, and I want to make them more exciting. So I'm going to try to rip them out from the cuffs and re-knit the tops in a cool lace pattern. Or at least that's the theoretical plan.

A sock in progress

Just when I thought I was done with gift knitting, more comes to the forefront. My mom has asked for socks. I suspect she was being somewhat facetious in her request, but I'm taking her seriously. Now, her birthday is the 20th, and I'd really really love to have these done for then. But I know myself, and I know about how likely that is, so I think I'll be happy enough if she gets them before the end of February.

Since a knitting blog is nigh useless without knitting pictures, here's a couple of the barely started sock. We're working the Garter rib pattern from Sensational Knitted Socks, in Cherry Tree Hill sock yarn, colorway "Cabin Fever"***. I'm enjoying the pattern, and absolutely loving the yarn. Easy to work with, gorgeous soft fabric.

In this, you can see why I'm not hopeful about the 2/20 deadline. 2 1/4 inches of cuff.



This is less useful for seeing progress, but is a fairly close representation of the color. Actually, on second thought, it's great for displaying my non-progress. Look at me, not thinking about it too hard.



And now, I should go knit on the sock instead of writing about it. Much better chance of finishing them that way.

Before I go, thanks to those who commented on my post from yesterday. It's nice to think I'm not entirely insane. It truly boggles my mind that this is even being raised as a serious question. And someday, I'll figure out a way to actually answer comments in e-mail, too.

***This yarn has a story. We were on our annual vacation with my parents, 5 of us, stuck in a teeny tiny cabin by bad weather. My mom, dad and I went out for a jaunt to go see a glass making shop near where we were staying, and there was an unexpected yarn store in the same building. I wandered through the yarn while my parents browsed the glass. I came accross this yarn... I'd been meaning to pick up some of this to try, and although it was not a usual color choice for me, once I saw the name, it absolutely had to come back with me.

Awesome, and a rant.

Well, I'm pleased to say that Linda of Grafton Fibers is as gracious and funny as her fibers are beautiful. I had such a wonderful fun and relaxing time at her studio on Saturday. It helped that I found that I really enjoyed the needlefelting. It was technically very simple - take fiber, stab with needle, repeat - but at the same time allows for such a broad range of creativity and playfulness that I was totally mesmerized.

Here's a pic of my second creation. I wanted to try out the face techniques that Linda was demonstrating, and seem to have created a wild woman.



She's going on my wall at the office, just in case my co-workers didn't already think I was weird.

The other piece I did is a neat abstract that I think looks rather celestial. Widget loved that one, so it is going to hang on her bedroom wall.


Felted Universe

And now on a slightly rantier note.

If you're reading this from my actual blog page, you might notice a new non-knitting button on the sidebar. You might even wonder what it's all about.

There's a furor brewing in mom-blogger land over the issue of women imbibing alcohol while at social gatherings with other mothers. I first read about it this motning at DotMoms. That led me to the blog of the woman who touched off the furor, which led me to Z Recommends' "Statement of Belief" on the matter.

There's a WHOLE lot that I could say on this topic, but I'm not sure I could be entirely coherent. For anyone to imply that a mother is a bad mother because she has the audacity to drink alcohol while she is with her child is beyond offensive to me.

There was a lot more to this rant, but I deleted it, because the truth is, I shouldn't even have to say it. Any woman's choice with regards to whether she drinks or not in the presence of her children is her choice to make, enough said.

I hope that sometime before I die, I can see a society where moms (and really, women in general) spend as much time working together and helping one another as they do tearing each other down and critizing the choices other women make.

Mermaids

Isn't this a beautiful felted creation? I snapped this pic at Rhinebeck in October. As I note in my caption, I was so amazed at the sculpture that I managed to entirely miss the beautiful batts of fiber that were right there next to it. I intend to remedy THAT oversight tomorrow.

Tomorrow, I get to take a field trip to Vermont with some of the other lovely knitters from Circles to visit Grafton Fibers for a lovely day of touring their studios and learning needle felting.

To say that I am excited would be an understatement.