on stash

Lately I've been feeling kind of guilty about the size of my stash and the money I spend on yarn. I don't know what triggered it - just a general feeling of feeling like it's an overconsumption on my part. I think I'd feel better about it if I knitted more frequently - it takes me a month or two to make a pair of socks, for example, and at that steady rate, I'd be knitting socks for the next three to six years - and that's a best-case scenario! Lord knows I never finish a pair in two months ... and that doesn't even take into account my non-sock stash. And the rate at which I replenish the stash!

With this in mind, though, I went through my stash with a very critical eye, and I listed even more yarn on my Ravelry trade/sell page. So far I've sold yarn for three pairs of socks. It makes me feel better, I think, to go through my stash and realize that maybe I bought something that's just not right for me and will be a better fit with someone else.

A few days ago, though, I had a conversation with my mom about knitting, and she said ever so happily, "Wow, you're really getting like me with quilting!" (in reference to my yarn collection). It immediately made me feel better - and it's not because my mom's fabric stash exceeds my yarn stash (sorry, Mom!). I need to learn it's OK to have yarn that I won't knit for years. It's not going anywhere.

I also reminded myself that I don't spend money on many other luxuries. I only shop for clothes when it's absolutely necessary (and when I do, it's gotta be on sale). I get my hair cut at a cheap salon every three to six months. The only thing I can honestly say I spend too much money on is eating out - and that's a factor of my dating status and work schedule (I'm sorry but I just can't eat Lean Cuisine five nights a week for dinner!).

Could I do a better job at spending/saving money? Of course. I pay my bills on time (always more than the minimum), but I could be putting even more toward my credit cards/student loans. Maybe this is a good reminder to re-evaluate my income and see where I could do a better job overall.

The bottom line is - knitting is about my personal happiness (just like when my mom would retreat to her sewing room when I was a kid). Few things make me happier than sticks and string.

I have another philosophical post in me about knitting stress, but it will have to wait for another time. In the meantime, here are my lastest stash enhancements.



This is Vesper Sock Yarn in Shout Out Loud - the July offering for the Vesper Sock Club. I love the crazy bright colors! This is a variegated yarn, not the striping kind she normally dyes.

I did an order at Simply Socks and it came today:



Online SuperSocke Afrika in a self-patterning yarn. It was less than $7 on clearance, woohoo!



Noro Silk Garden sock yarn, swoon. So beautiful.

I have an order at Amazon on its way here - it has a little scale in it for weighing yarn, so I'll be able to better judge how tall I can make socks! (Yes I know, making them toe-up would help solve that problem.)

back from the burgh

Boy what a trip it was! We were on the go for the whole, short time we were there ... but I think that seeing my family totally rejuvenated me and I hit the ground running when we returned. The whole set of pictures from the trip is here, but I'll post a few of my favorites.

We went up for my cousin's wedding - here is Doug and his beautiful bride, Andrea:



They got married on the college campus where they met.
At the reception, there was a photo shoot of my grandma and her 10 kids:



It made me sad, thinking that my pap couldn't be a part of it, but I know he was there in a way. I still find it hard to believe he passed away nearly three years ago - and I feel like it's a lie when I have to tell myself he's really gone.

Here are my two favorite Joshes in the world:



And here we are at Kennywood:



It can be an intense experience, being around the sheer number of relatives I have (especially when you are not at all close with your own family). I think he had a great time though.

And as for my puppy dog, she seems to be 100 percent better. I'm so, so, so, so happy about it. We picked her up at the vet when we got back and found out she wasn't sick all weekend - and they fed her all her food (about twice as much as I asked them to - I wanted to keep her on a limited diet while she was there). Oh well. But I'm happy to report that her digestive system seems to be a-OK.

I'm off today but not tomorrow (like normal) - my boss asked me if I could work Friday since we're a little short-staffed this week. So I have a split weekend, but I'm totally fine with it. Usually I feel like I have a zillion things to catch up with when I return from a trip, but for some reason, I don't this time around. I've spent most of this afternoon working on my Fire on the Mountain sock (which juuuust barely fits over my heel. yikes).

happy weekend!

I'm headed to Pittsburgh this morning for my cousin's wedding! I woke up two hours early thanks to trip excitement, but we can't leave earlier than 8 because I have to take Gracie to the vet for boarding when they open then. Boo. She's doing a bit better, I think - but it comes and goes. I'll be worried about her all weekend ... but I know we'll be keeping busy in Pittsburgh so hopefully I'll keep my mind off of it.

In knitting news, I've finished my first bib:



It was also my first time to knit a buttonhole *and* sew a button (I think my mom didn't believe me when I said it to her ... but like she said, I always had her to do it for me!) When I was at A.C. Moore yesterday to pick up buttons, I also got some more Sugar'n Cream for more bibs (and have cast on for another already). They are such easy gifts!



I also acquired some new STR mediumweight in Farmhouse (a colorway I've been admiring for sometime) through a Ravelry destash. Sweet!



I'm bringing the bib-in-progress, as well as my Fire on the Mountain sock in progress. Good times ahead (though I know little knitting will get done!)

My sweet cookie of a dog has been sick for the past few days - since Thursday. It's just about all I can think about. We finally got to the vet yesterday (of course she got sick over the weekend - a holiday one at that), and I'm hoping her tummy issues are resolved soon. We're boarding her at the kennel starting Friday for our trip to Pittsburgh, and I know I'll be worried if she's not 100 percent when we leave.

Because of all this excitement, I haven't been focusing my energy on preparing for this trip. I've got lots of cleaning and packing ahead before we go. I haven't been to the gym in almost two weeks. Ick.

Yesterday I took a media day tour of the San Jacinto, a guided missile cruiser, at the naval station. It was pretty awesome - but a wee bit earlier in the day than I'm used to (I had to be at the naval station at 6:30 a.m.!). Pics are here. The people on the ship were really, really nice and I learned a lot. We were supposed to cruise to a weapons facility, where we'd disembark and take a drive back to Norfolk. But software problems meant we weren't able to sail. Darn!

what am I thinking? and good/bad of the week

I've joined Project 365 at Flickr. (That and the 365 group for crafty peeps.)



Here's my week in play-by-play form.

Work has been a breeze.
The good: A holiday falls on my day off work. I got a shift to work on a whole project that will appear in Sunday's paper.
The bad: My week included a day where my insides decided to hate me and I had to miss work Wednesday.

I got my hair cut for the first time since September.
The good: It looks nice. And the stylist blow-dried it straight.
The bad: The stylist got to me 40 minutes past my appointment time. She saw me knitting a baby bib and thought I was pregnant (after I told her it was for a friend - it wasn't an uninitiated pregnancy assumption. Her English isn't so hot). She got hit in the eye with a spray bottle after shampooing my hair, making me think I was going to get a lopsided, one-eye-viewed haircut. She abandoned me in mid-blow drying to take the foil out of someone else's hair. Argh.



Josh and I went out to dinner.
The good: We didn't go to one of the four places we always eat. It was a local fishing pier's bar - we had nice seats, it was breezy, it was sunset.
The bad: Service at this restaurant (at a local fishing pier) was slooooow. And they put beef on our nachos when we ordered chicken. And they gave Josh hush puppies when he ordered fries (this was OK with him, though, as he enjoyed the hush puppies). My margarita was way too girly.
The worst: It was wayyy too pricey.

My cousin was in the hospital with bleeding on his brain after a nasty fall.
The good: Bottom line, he's going to be OK. (He was at a hospital about five blocks from my apartment so it was very easy to go there.)
The bad: The serious injury (obviously).

So yes, the fourth of July is on my day off work - and Josh has the day off, too! We're grilling steaks on the George Foreman, having corn on the cob and roasted potatoes. YUM.

I can haz winter?

I'm so over summertime. I refuse to go outside until I get so cabin-fevered that I take the dog for a 30-minute walk and we return and collapse in a heap, both of us panting, and I again vow to never leave the artificially cooled apartment. Repeat.

I've been really cranky lately and I know the heat has something to do with it. I really, really, really missing running. And I refuse to get up at 5 a.m. to run after going to bed at 1 a.m. I just can't do it. I'd get run over by a car, running while half asleep. So I guess I'll just have to substitute it with the gym, which is not the same (as much as I want it to be), until it gets to a more reasonable temperature circa September or October.

I've been knitting lots, though - on my brother's sock and on this:



I love it so much. The colors are mesmerizing, I can't put it down. I'm a little worried about it being too tight - I cast on 68 stitches on a size 1 needles. We shall see. Socks on DPNs are so impossible to try on.

my first yarn club

I have been wanting to try a club for a long time but I've never felt the desire to pay $220 to join the Socks that Rock Club (FYI, for those who don't know, that gets you six skeins of yarn in the club - and patterns to be fair - while the same amount could get you 10-11 skeins without all the foofaraw that goes with it. I'd rather get more yarn, but that's my choice and it's not right for all). Anyway. A few weeks back when I saw a post on the Knitterly Things blog about a new sock club starting, I decided to give it a whirl. Only three months, reasonably priced, etc. And she's a Pittsburgher, which in my extreme loyalty to the city made it even more 'right.'

So my first shipment arrived Monday, and I loooove it:



The colorway is Lovely Lollipop Sky. It's my first self-striping yarn, can you believe it? I think I might make a pair of Jaywalkers with it.

a productive weekend

I have some more FOs to show! Big surprise, it's more baby boy knits:



Finally finished the Lorna's Laces multi socks for my co-worker who's having twins soon. She's home for the duration now so I'll have to give them to her husband (also a reporter - very convenient). I'm glad I finished them before she gave birth!

I also made a hat from that blue Malabrigo I picked up the other day:



It's for my co-worker Brian's wife who's having a boy in November. I knit this hat in one day - my first one-day knit EVER. Can you blame me? It was my first time knitting with Malabrigo. I took this puppy to the beach and knit the whole way through "Get Smart" (which was very funny and much better than the reviews I've read).

I made a little mosaic of all the blue knitting I've done in the past few months, check it out here or at flickr for the details.



I might have one more boy knit in me for the recipient of the Malabrigo hat - probably a pair of socks from the leftover LL. And I'll find out in a few weeks what the next pregnant co-worker is having. (She thinks it's a girl.) I am surprisingly not yet fatigued of all the baby knitting. I think it's because they generally go so fast.

Last night I made something that didn't involve yarn - peach cobbler.



It was suuuper yummy and I don't even like peaches that much. Josh was really happy, though. Hopefully he won't have to wait another year and 10 months of dating to get another peach cobbler outta me!

a productive day

Yep, today was productive - I made a tomato and mozzarella salad (YUM) and pico de gallo based on this yummy recipe I saw linked to on Shannon's blog:



It's not as juicy as I would have liked, and I had to substitute lemon juice for lime, but it's still pretty yummy. I think I need to mush up some of the tomatoes to make it a little runnier next time.

I also finished the cowl for my friend Lori:



Aaaaand this was all before I was called into work overtime tonight (five minutes before the shift started!). I was binding off when the phone rang, so I threw the cowl in my bag and weaved in the ends at work. She seemed to really like it, so I'm happy! I took the photo of myself wearing it amid running around the apartment like a crazy person while getting ready for work. In about 15 minutes, I changed out my pajamas, did my hair and walked the dog. WHEW.

Here is the yarn I bought at one of my LYSes on Wednesday (first, two photos of Malabrigo, then some Plymouth DK for skully socks - my first colorwork, yikes!







Today I also bought the makings of peach cobbler - it's my boyfriend's favorite dessert and we always joke about how I never make it for him. I was going to make it tonight, but I had to work. Tomorrow it will be peach cobbler!

it's my weekend again?!

Man, four-day weeks go by so quickly! Today I worked on a project for about half of my shift, and it flew by. Before work, I took a trip to one of my LYSes that I haven't visited in a while. (One of the two gender-to-be-determined work pregnancies is, indeed, a boy. So more baby boy knitting is ahead! I told my co-worker Laurie that it's up to her to break the trend!) Anyhow, I enjoyed the Knitting Corner's new selection - and managed to spend about $30 on some notions (and yarn for baby projects - including Mmmmmalabrigo!). Pictures will come soon.

So yes, it's my weekend. I have no plans for tomorrow except to work out, knit and listen to Tom Waits - his latest tour began Tuesday, and I'm a little sad it wasn't anywhere near me. I have goals - to finish the toe on the last baby sock, and to cast off on Lori's cowl. And Friday I am planning on the beach and seeing "Get Smart" at one of the local Cinema Cafes - movie theaters that serve yummy food while you watch.

What's *not* stated but will be happening nonetheless is a trip to the gym each of those days! If I may say so myself, I've been pretty good about working out - four days a week. 60 minutes of cardio two days, 30 minutes of cardio + weights the other two. I think it's pretty much a routine now, and I'm really enjoying it (except for the loud-mouthed smelly cigarette-smoking woman who seems to go to the gym at the same time as me and comment on EVERYTHING on the TV. But anyway).

Today I booked a plane ticket for my brother to visit for four nights in August. I'm already looking forward to it! I imagine we'll go to the beach a few times, cook some nice meals (and go to some seafood places) and it will be a blast. He is very deserving of a trip to the beach, this past year has not been the kindest to him. I'm so glad we are pals.