Strange and lovely

With two full days to get through waiting for my son and husband to do other things, I went to a yarn shop in Knoxville. Even though the sign indicated the shop would open at 10, I know knitting shops. I have seen those signs on doors of shops that didn't open all day. It has been a running joke with us as we have traveled out of our way in cities to arrive at shops that are not keeping their posted schedules.

I have also had mixed receptions at yarn shops: one shopkeeper acted as if I were trespassing when I touched her sample knits; one shopkeeper snorted when I said my fair isle techniques were not as neat as hers (this was a long, long time ago); some keepers keep out of my way; some are friendly.

I arrived too early, went to get coffee, played with the iPad a while, then returned to the shop. OPEN! Score.

I wasn't planning to buy much, but I so infreqently get to touch and see finished garments that finding a good shop is always a treat even if I am not buying much and even if the shop is not friendly. This shop (Loopville) is a great in-between shop. Not too much attention, but plenty when I asked for it: an invitation to peruse their magazines and books, an invitation to use their shop computer to look at my Ravelry queue.

Good conversation, too. I shared my thoughts on yarn with one of the workers, and we hit it off. Similar tastes in patterns, yarns, eco-friendliness. She was very helpful, and the more we talked the more we had in common. I have just started a new career journey, and she was just ending a career in the same field; she has just started working in a yarn shop, and I long to be able to do that someday when I have taught all I can stand to teach.

I left the shop with a bag of yarn--not too much and not too expensive--and a feeling that even though I am not prone to finding new friends, I am capable of it. Given the time and opportunity and pool of people, I can do it.

That experience gave me something to compare to my experience back at the baseball camp where I sat for hours waiting for my son. No one there had anything to say to me, even though many of the people sitting around know me and my kid. I was, in fact, being ignored (probably because I am a shy person perceived as being a snob and probably because I am indeed a snob about books, cheese, knitting, and pretenders).

I know that the shopworker wanted to make a sale--it IS her job, of course--but she wasn't faking her genuine conversation. I prefer that. I can make small talk if I have to, but I'm perfectly happy waiting for good conversations to happen organically. If I can have good conversation once every few years with a fellow knitter, book lover, and composition instructor, I'll wait for it.

Designing Woman

On Christmas morning, I woke up remembering that my friend Donna (who NEVER forgets my birthday) would be home for her birthday this year.

Having a birthday the day after Christmas must have been pretty hard when she was a kid. I can imagine all her presents wrapped up in shiny Santa paper and nestled in very wrinkly recycled tissue. That probably isn't what happened, but I've always felt that the two friends I have with birthdays the day after Christmas missed out on anticipating their next birthday. If all the presents come in a two-day span, that makes for a long year with nothing in between.

I'm basing all this from the point of view of someone who had a perfectly mid-summer birthday herself. No Santa wrapping for my presents. Well, not usually.

Anyway, Donna never forgets my birthday, and I sometimes forget hers. But not this year. This year she's getting something designed just for her: an asymmetrical neckwarmer.

I have had these two hanks of Noro Cashmel in the stash for a few years now. I made myself a February Lady Sweater from the rest of it, and I had knit this yarn into several small items that never seemed to be finished. Two hanks isn't much, and not everyone deserves cashmere. A few weeks ago, I raveled those small items, washed and straightened the fiber, and hung it to dry. This neckwarmer was designed to fit inside the collar of an open blouse or slipped over a t-shirt neckline to keep the drafts away. The cashmere is soft and not itchy and the fabric is densely knit.

It was just waiting to become Donna's birthday gift. I hope she loves it.

Giving

For many years, I worked with a colleague whom I admired. Tough, smart, quick-witted: attributes that are necessary when working with students and teachers. Admirable and necessary until they were turned on me.

At least twice a year, she would find some way to hurt my feelings. I say "find" because I believe that she did indeed look for ways to cut me--an ugly word, a rolled eye, a comment to students about me or my abilities--all "uncalled-for," as my mother would say. For a long time, I tried to stay out of her way, but as I became more confident in my abilities, I decided not to care so much about it.

If she were cordial, fine.

If not, fine.

I can change no one but myself, right? I have so much trouble trusting people, and even more difficulty finding people with whom I have something (enough?) in common, but I have usually been able to find such friends among my colleagues. What is so odd is that she and I had more in common than anyone else I worked with, but she always made it clear that she did not intend us to be friends, and since we had to be colleagues, she could make that miserable, too.

But as I said, I stopped worrying so much about it. This is the point in the story that most narrators would say, ". . . and once I stopped caring and worrying, our relationship became magically wonderful." It didn't.

We carried on working together, sometimes with common goals, but more often without them. By the time I was ready to move on to another position, our dissatisfaction with our jobs was one thing we did have in common. I asked her for a recommendation, and she agreed to give it.

Now that I have moved on, I have received notes and a phone call from her. I'm not sure what to do about that. I know she is very unhappy in her position; I have deep sympathy for her. I have been where she is.

Do I reach out to her? Do I answer her notes with notes of my own? Doing so would be painful if she reacts in the way she has reacted in the past. Does it matter?

She has a birthday soon, and I woke up this morning thinking of her latest card. My sleepy brain began working through small gift possibilities that could be left on her doorstep. I'm going to spend some time today thinking about what to do.

Going Nowhere Fast

I've been spending a lot of (too much?) time knitting lately, and my skills have really improved. My pattern reading, shaping, innovating, and modifying are much better than before. While I focused on small items that could be given as gifts (in a pinch) instead of complete garments, I spent hours finding the perfect projects for those small amounts of yarn that have been gathering dust up there on the second floor. Each item is nearly perfectly knitted and finished because I was working hard on my presentation skills. I don't want someone to see that the items are obviously hand knitted. It's that whole "homemade" vs. "handmade" dilemma.

I have three new scarves (gold mohair, red cashmere, and chartreuse leafy lace), a new vest, and a new hat. I donated hats, scarves, and neckerchiefs to the charity auction at work. My brother was given a hat; my nieces and sister-in-law received hand warmers to wear over their gloves; my mom has a new lap robe to use in her new car while she and Dad travel this winter.

But the stash reduction--my original goal--is not proceeding quickly enough. How can it multiply in this way? No matter how much I knit, I cannot catch up with it. The baskets and bins do not look much different. And I've been pretty strict about buying no new yarn. I even occasionally test myself by stopping into a shop or browsing Etsy yarn sellers.

I have allowed myself to buy new knitting tools and a few magazines, but no new yarn unless it is needed to finish a project begun with stash yarn. (Yesterday, I bought two hanks of yarn from fellow Ravelry users so I could finish a scarf made from yarn I bought five years ago. Sad. I know.) So why can't I catch up? It makes me angry at myself for being so out of control with my purchases. Hundreds of dollars worth of yarn. Can I really wear this many items? Can I ever convince anyone else that these items cost much more in both fiber and labor than one purchased from a store, and they, therefore, should be loved and cherished?

Probably not.

So, for now, I'm plowing on through, resigned to the knowledge that I'm going nowhere fast.

Redemption

Remember when I fell off the wagon and bought that lovely turquoise silk/cotton? I felt really guilty about buying that yarn, even though I knew that buying such an item helps someone who is running her own business. I have so much yarn and succumbing to the temptation is sometimes a little embarrassing.

Especially when I buy it on a whim and then it sits in the stash for years.

Not this time. This time, I left the box on the stairs and looked in on it occasionally and when the Yarn Harlot decided to head up the Knitting Olympics again this year, I was ready. The sweater or item we choose for the Olympics is supposed to be a challenge. Since I hate knitting sleeves and bobbles, this was the sweater for me.

After 17 days of some serious knitting, I now have a lovely sweater that was cast on during the Opening Ceremonies and finished by the time of the Closing Ceremony. I don't know what I would have done if school hadn't been canceled two days in a row, but I consider that time a gift and I won't look it in the mouth.

Here it is: the Debbie Bliss Yoke Detail Pullover. Well, darn. Crappy photo. I'll take another when I wear it tomorrow. It really is truly lovely--and I'm just so darn proud of myself. I think I'll have a beer and a cigar.

Some Housecleaning

Just a trick. I never really clean house. My stash, however, is out of control. Yesterday, my loving husband asked me how many hiding spots I have full of yarn stash, and I couldn't answer. I didn't want to answer, either.

But Friday, with a day off work, I decided to spend some time going through the mess and getting my stuff in order. I was inspired by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's stash-busting project kits, and I decided to do something similar. While she made herself a sock-of-the-month club out of her current stash, I made myself a small-project-of-the-month club. The first of each month, I'll pick something at (sort of) random and complete it before the end of the month. I started by thinking about all the patterns that I want to use, then pulled them out and made copies. I checked to make sure I had the yarn I needed for the project, then wound it into hanks if necessary, and bagged it up with the pattern. By the end of the day, I had 13 kits for myself.

Some of the kits will take just a few hours to complete. For example, the Ostrich Feather Kerchief takes about eight hours from beginning to end, and it's pretty. It will use up about one hank of the light chartreuse cashmere I've had hiding for awhile. I will also attempt knitting with beads, using up some seed beads that have been in the craft drawer for about 10 years. (Yes, it's true--at least 10 years.) Other kits will require some attention, like the patterned socks, but many of them will be easy knitting, and I will have some nice items for myself or emergency gifts.

My February project is a silk tank top that is supposed to take about a weekend to complete. I don't really believe that, but it's a small doable project that is kind of mindless up to the armscyes. I hope I have enough of the silk to finish it; if not, I'll wait until my niece grows out of the top I made her from the same yarn.

The stash is now breathing a bit, but I didn't put much of a dent into it. My next big project is to do the same kit making with some larger projects.

Off the Wagon

On Saturday, I found a sweater's worth of lovely bluebird colored tweed fingering weight yarn on etsy.com. It was being sold at a terrific price, and it took a great deal of willpower not to click on the button.

But I didn't. I even confessed my sin to the pre-teen son, and he shared the near miss with my husband, usually a surefire method to help prevent these nasty slips with my yarn addiction.

On Sunday, with both of them out of the house, I ran a quick check on etsy just to see if the yarn was still available. If all the skeins were still there, I would consider that my message from God, and I would be compelled to buy it as soon as I saw it.

It was gone. All six skeins. Whew.

But I had a long, stressful day today, so when I came in this afternoon, I checked etsy's knitting offerings, narrowing my search to recycled or reclaimed yarns. And I fell off the wagon, folks. Not just a whoops-I-nearly-lost-my-balance slip of a single skein of sock weight wool. This was an all-out effort that took clicking on seven--yes, I am snubbing as I type it--seven separate skeins of turquoise silk/cotton at a much cheaper price than I planned on paying for silk yarn later in the spring. I practically shook when I saw it.

I am knitting like mad to finish the strawberry beret, the striped raglan, and the perfect cardigan before I start the Buttercup top that Frogginette is also knitting. I am not as adventurous as she is; I will probably follow the pattern slavishly.

Anyway, I was doing so well, cleaning out those bags of yarn, knitting them up into nice little items for myself and others. I wonder if I'll be able to avoid another hiccup in the diet. I made it 25 days.

Stash Reduction Continues

January continues to be cold and rainy, so the Stash Reduction Project is working out well. It isn't as if I have nothing else to do. With all the changes in my work schedule, the graduate course I am taking and the college course I am teaching, I have plenty to think about. But thinking about my knitting gets me through my work day.

Since I began the SRP, I have had to be a bit more creative, and that forces me to think about color combinations and pattern adjustments. For example, I am knitting a sweater from some Harrisville Highland tweed. I didn't have enough of that color to make an entire sweater, so I began pulling strands from the yarn stash. The sweater is turning out quite well. I am nearly finished with the body, and even though I have had to ravel a knitted vest to reclaim most of that Harrisville Highland, I can live with that.

Last week, I knitted a beret from hand dyed chunky weight wool--very blueberry. I have enough wool to make another just like it. Actually, I have enough purple hand-dyed wool to make two purple ones just like it, and I am knitting a red one using half hand-dyed recycled merino wool and half solid red. This hat style is not exactly flattering on me, so I'm taking them to work to see if I can sell them for $10 each.

But with a little extra cash in my pocket, I might be tempted to buy some more yarn.

Stash Reduction in Progress

This winter I have tried to go on a yarn diet. My husband would probably say that a yarn diet--at least for me--is never a cold turkey diet. You know the diets where you deprive yourself of every good thing you can imagine--butter, dessert, butter, chocolate, and butter?

That's not my style for food dieting and it isn't my style for yarn dieting, either. However, I recognized the need for some stash reduction back in the fall, so I engaged in some early Christmas gift knitting. I knit a hat for Sarah, a top for Kay, and a few scarves to put back for last-minute gifts. All these items were knit from the stash, but they were small items that didn't really put a big dent in the current holdings. It seems that the more I pull out and go through, the more yarn I have. I believe that like-species find each other in the bins and bags and shelves and find ways to multiply.

So, to lighten the yarn load that must be weighing on the floor joists in my "yarn area" (as if I have only one area!), I knit two items from Way-Back Stash: the Mayer sweater knit from 15 skeins of Aran wool I purchased at a sweater shop in Killarney a few years ago and the End of May Hat (knit from three small hanks of wool I bought in a tiny English village.

The Mayer sweater project was knit almost entirely while watching Days 1-6 of 24. Easy knitting: I made only one mistake that required tinking back. The End of May hat, however, was a white-knuckler most of the time. I'm pretty sure I was what you could describe as surly while that hat was going on, but it was only about three days of knitting, and three days of surly is pretty normal for me.

My reward for the SRPs (Stash Reduction Projects) will be a nice purchase for myself later on. Perhaps it will be some silk or some silky bamboo. I have a nice gift certificate to start with. But, if I shake all the stash yarn out and make it look pretty maybe I could trick myself into believing that all of that yarn is somehow new.

If you have any requests for gifts, now is the time to make them.