The First Step

is admitting you have a problem. I ...may have a small problem.

My name is Persian Pen Name, and I buy yarn.

This realization started yesterday, when I picked up an awesome glass-fronted cabinet off of Freecycle (which if you haven't checked out yet, you should, because it's awesome), and my first thought was yarn cabinet! So I took it home, cleaned it out, and set out to Organize The Stash.

Step 1: Centralize. All yarn that is not currently in the first yarn cabinet (now Cabinet Prime) is gathered in the dining room.

Step 2: Separate. It's yarn. It tangles. It happens.

Step 3: Wind. I hooked up the swift and ball winder to the cabinet (and how cool is it that I can hook up my swift and winder to my cabinet?) and wound like a woman gone mad.

Step 4: Stack. I've heard it said that winding your yarn into cakes before putting it into storage is a bad idea - that it stretches out the fibers, and you end up with a less fluffy yarn. I don't know if this is true (though it sounds convincing), but I will say this about cakes: they sure as hell stack better than hanks. I have made of my cabinet a veritable brick wall of yarn, completely unsorted by fiber, weight, or color. I am running out of cabinet, and still have plenty of yarn to stack. Do you know what this means?

I have two cabinets full of yarn. Two cabinets. Full. Of yarn. Just yarn. Not yarn-and-fiber, not yarn-and-whatever-else-you-put0in-a-cabinet-that-isn't-yarn. Plus, my approximately 10 lb fiber stash (admittedly, 5 lbs is still that one fleece I need to scour and send to Becky). Yarn Harlot talks of "wool blindness" affecting family members of knitters - being surrounded by so much yarn, they become so used to it, it's practically invisible. I think that knitters are maybe not immune to this themselves.

So I think I'm going to cut down on the yarn buying for a little while. I'm not going to say no yarn, because then I always end up impuse buying a few thousand yards of ColourMart Silk in a moment of weakness. And I'm not going to get back on Hastur's Challenge, because hey, I do need patterns to use up all this yarn! And of course, I'm nowhere near SABLE (I plan to live for a very LONG time, after all). But definitely I'll try and show a little more restraint.

I don't think it helps that I'm expecting both more yarn and more fiber in the mail soon.

HatlotWatch 2007

Day: 01
Goals:
a) Knit 3000 stitches on Galveston Prime (check)
b) Put numbers on my schematic
c) Build the Rat Castle (check - not knitting related, but happy making)
d) Plot the final shaping of the Cuddlefish (check)

Thus begins HarlotWatch 2007. If successful, I will knit 3000 stitches a day for 55 days, culminating in one very finished Galveston Prime, in time enough to show off for the Yarn Harlot when she comes to Houston. In the event that I get Galvy done and blocked and can't get the day off, I will set fire to all of College Station and escape in the ensuing chaos.

UPDATE: In the interests of not upsetting the Margarita Provider, I hereby promise never to set fire to Hastur's house on pain on hangover.

Things are great

Except for the fact that Yarn Harlot's coming to Houston September 18th, which is not only a tuesday, it's a work day in my no-vacation-having probationary time. I wonder if I can swing something with my boss.

In other news, schematic! (no numbers on it as of yet)

Chugging Along

... on my Galveston shawl. Yup. Halfway through Chart C, after ripping back the point-shaping and border charts. It's sad to see so much knitting gone at once, but it's got that satisfying gut feeling you get when you're sacrificing time to do something right.

I think they call it insanity?

Anyway, seeing the near-finished Galveston shawls on Flickr and in various blogs has really motivated me to get crackin' on the original (Galveston Prime?) so I can hurry up and wear it already. It's still light enough that I can get multiple rows finished walking to and from work and on breaks, which is a nice feeling. I've ended up with an odd stitch marker system, though - my fancy-shmancy bead-and-wire markers at the beginning of the round and between each of the sections, and then cut up straw bits in between pattern repeats on the wave section. It doesn't really make the actual knitting easier, but it makes me feel good to count how many pattern repeats I've done, and it makes tinking back to fix mistakes a little easier.

In other news, Mr. Hastur came up with a great gaming idea, and we've been talking about it almost non-stop since tuesday. I don't want to say too much on it right now, but it might make me have to go buy one of those freakishly large 1" hex battle maps.

Herringbone Socks Finished!

Whohoo!

As of yet there's no pictures of the finished socks, but hopefully Hastur will let me borrow her camera so I can post it here and on Ravelry. Ready for the rundown?

Pattern: Web Socks, by Erica Alexander (IK Winter 2005)
Yarn: Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock, chocolate. 2 skeins.
Needles: 2.00 mm/US 0
Modifications: Toe up instead of cuff down, short row garter stitch heels and toes, 80 stitches in the foot and 88 in the cuff, small gusset before the heel. 2x2 ribbing at the top, tubular bind off (which I learned for these socks).

Total knitting time: 2 months, because I'm easily distracted.