Slightly spendy, but resolutely un-guilty

So I've REALLY fallen off the wagon this week. Since the yarn splurge last weekend, I've done a bit more shopping. I went back to the store that was having the moving sale (twice even, but once was purely just to keep someone company) and bought a bit more Noro and some Elizabeth Zimmerman books (gotta see what all the fuss is about, after all). The Yarn and Fiber Company was having a 15% off sale and I picked up some Kureyon colourways I had my eye on. I went to another yarn store to pick up a pattern. I saw some very very discontinued Silk Garden on eBay, made a modest bid, and won (to my utter surprise, I was completely expecting to be outbid).

Normally I might be feeling terribly guilty about all this, as though I were spending away my future or being totally reckless, when I had specifically told myself I wouldn't buy any more yarn until Easter. But really, it wasn't that much additional money, I am far from dipping into savings/credit to finance it, and all the yarn/books were on sale (well, the pattern wasn't). All the yarn is also earmarked for specific projects that I had in mind beforehand, not projects that I made up on the spot in the store.

I think I've gotten a lot better at not buying yarn on impulse, at not saying "oooh, here's some pretty yarn....quick, what could I make with this?", or justifying a yarn purchase by saying "I guess I could always just make a scarf out of this". I have a lot of "this is for a random scarf" yarn in my stash, and I'm tired of it (I love all the yarn of course, it's just that I and my family have a lot of scarves now). The Silk Garden is for a large-ish project-in-progress (I'll blog about it soon, I swear, but there's been a lot of other bloggable knitting these days), and the Kureyon is for a smaller version of a log cabin-y blanket that I saw on Ravelry (damn you, Ravelry!).

Anyway, I'm sick of looking at yarn now. Unless one or two very very specific opportunities come up, I'm more than done for now. =)

In other news, I've finished the front of my Nothing' But A T Shirt (I have no idea why the picture looks so weird and swirly, click to see the actual photo on Flickr).



Immediately after casting off the front, I threw both body pieces into a Eucalan bath and pinned them out. They are drying on the blocking board now, and once they're dry I'll sort of pin them together and see how they look on me. I pinned them out to the correct dimensions, but I'm terrified that the yarn will snap back and create a lot of body-hugging negative ease. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I'm no longer the underweight-to-the-point-where-people-were-telling-me-to-please-put-on-some-pounds girl that I was 6 months ago, and I'm not sure how flattering it would be. =)

I did the shaping for the neck using short rows, instead of doing the step-wise bindoffs (like I did for the back), and you can kind of see where the stitches look a bit wonky as a result. I hope that will disappear once I pick up the stitches for the neckband (I was kind of hoping they would even out with blocking, but it appears you can still tell).



And on a completely unrelated note, I love that Daylight Savings Time is so much earlier this year. More light, hooray! I have a feeling that it will be hard to wake up tomorrow morning, though. =)