Yarn inventory and public humiliation

How much yarn is too much yarn? Do you buy yarn as you use it or do you collect and hoard it? Apparently, I am a hoarder. Last week, I inventoried my yarn stash. This took me two hours. TWO HOURS! I have, officially, 419 balls of yarn in my stash. This does not include fiber that can be spun into more yarn. We won't discuss that. The next two hours consisted of me entering all of the yarn info into an excel spreadsheet. This is how I discovered the actual total once I summed up the quantity column. At first, I misread and thought I had 719 balls of yarn. I was so stunned I believed this to be true for a full 24 hours before I looked at my spreadsheet again. Now, 419 doesn't seem so very high. In fact, I was quite relieved to know I did NOT have 719 balls of yarn but only 419. What's the end result of this knowledge? I have to knit, weave or other wise use 200 balls of that yarn before I allow myself to buy anymore. Moving on now. In other knitting news, I have purchased a copy of Alice Starmore's Tudor Roses. I MUST KNIT CATHERINE HOWARD! Why? Because it's purty and challenging. I must also knit several other items from this book in order to justify what I paid for the book. Trust me, you really don't want to know what I paid. Ridiculous I tell you but if I knit damn near everything in there (and I probably will) it will be worth it for me. In completely non knitting news, my digital camera has died and I've ordered a new one so this post will be photoless. I cannot bear to put up another crappy phone camera photo. Should be here next week so until then, no pics. Now, for the public humiliation news. Thursday morning my oldest son woke up sick to his stomach and had to stay home from school. Magically, by mid morning he felt better so I had him accompany me on many errands. He hates that beyond words. One of those many errands involved me scouring local libraries for other Alice Starmore books. At the final library stop, my son sat behind me while I perused the bookshelf. Keep in mind he had been impatiently whining about going home at each and every stop prior to this. So, when I heard a whisper behind me begging to leave, I naturally assumed this was my son. I went into this long spiel about not whining and leaving when I was done only to turn around and see a stunned little girl sitting beside another grinning mom. No hole was available to crawl into so I apologized profusely as the other mom said that my response to her daughter sounded good to her and to not worry about it. I was mortified!!!! Note to self, ensure child you are scolding is actually your child. Thanks for the understanding to the other mom!

disbelief

Well, I was going to post yesterday a really tongue in cheek piece since I inventoried my yarn stash and all. Then, I watched the news and decided it just isn't the right time. I'm at a loss for words about the whole Virginia Tech massacre. Stunned. Just stunned. I'm so sorry for the victims, their friends and families. I'm also wondering what in the hell would motivate a person to do that? How do you get that damn crazy, brutal and filled with rage? It just is beyond my comprehension. Unreal. At a more appropriate time, I'll be back with my yarn stash post but until then, I'm keeping it to myself. For now, I'll be watching, along with everyone else, to try and figure out just what the hell happened and how to keep it from happening again.

Blocking saved the day

You know those pink tube socks that I was afraid would be too small? Well, I finished them last night and blocked them. I love blocking now. I will block whenever I can. My pink socks don't have to be gifts. They can be for ME ME ME!!! Yes! It's the yarn. I love the yarn. Fleece Artist in some pink and creamy white color. Purty and girly. I also finished about a week ago my Scottish Wave Scarf from Cat Bordhi's Treasury of Magical Knitting. Okay, my shawl is really more like a capelet because, ahem, I didn't check gauge. Now, gauge is something I normally check. In fact, I usually plan one extra skein of yarn just for that. Why not this go round? Well, the LYS I got the yarn and needles from had it as a prepackaged kit. I don't have an LYS so when I was on vacation at my Dad's, I went to the one there. Normally, I shop online. I had to buy the needles special since I don't normally have circulars that long so I was rather stuck with those needles. Okay, I could have bought new needles but I wasn't going to do it. That would have required waiting for a pair from mail order and I've been dying to do that pattern for awhile now. I love it even though it's a capelet and even though I messed up the stitch pattern a few times. No, I did not rip it. It's moebius knitting for crying out loud. I was too afraid to rip it and end up with a mess. The mistake isn't that glaring and if you're that close to me that you'd notice you'd better be my husband. And believe me, he is sure not gonna notice. So, the end result is that I'm likely going to end up with some new knitting needles with really long cables. I might give the knitpicks set a try. So, here are the socks and the scarf/capelet. Ignore the nonmatching pajamas with the capelet. Still using the crappy camera phone but I'll get some new disks for my camera next week. Till later, Alicia