Yes, I know that's a boring title, but I'm not feeling very inspired today. =) Clapotis #2 is done! The knitting got really tedious towards the end, but I think the final product was totally worth it. She still needs a good blocking (maybe, I'm tempted to just leave her the way she is because I'm lazy, but I've heard that Silk Garden softens up a lot after being washed), but she looks perfectly lovely otherwise. I love the contrast of the horizontal stripes with the vertical dropped stitches! 
And a poorly-taken photo of her being worn around the neck: 
Project specs: Clapotis pattern from Knitty6 skeins of Noro Silk Garden, colourway 34I did one fewer increase section, so the scarf would be a little narrower and I'd get more mileage out of each colour change, and I think I did 2 or 3 additional straight sections. I wish there were a little bit more purple in this dyelot, but I still love love love the colours.P.S. WTF is up with all the popups? Are you getting the popups? How can we get rid of the popups?!?
I've been obsessing over the stash lately. In trying to keep with the resolution to keep the stash under control, I've been evaluating the relative merits and knitability of every single skein. And you know what? There is a lot of yarn in the stash that I know I'll never knit. Either because I don't know what to do with it (what to do with 2 mismatched skeins of Colinette Zanziba I got on sale?), because knitting with it will likely drive me to insanity (early in my knitting career I thought 4-ply sweaters would be a good idea, um, no thanks), or because it is just too beautiful to knit. And that's where we come to the Core Stash (terminology blatantly stolen from the Yarn Harlot). Yarn that will never be knit because we are unworthy of its beauty, that exists solely for inspirational purposes. Surprisingly for me, saver/hoarder extraordinaire, there are only 5 skeins of yarn in my own personal Core Stash so far. 3 skeins of Noro Silk Garden in colour 36, and 2 skeins of Koigu KPPPM in a particularly beautiful dyelot of colourway P118. 
These yarns are so lovely that it makes my heart melt to see them. I may also add my last ball of Noro Silk Garden 34 (leftover from Clapotis #2, which I will post about soon) to the mix, but I haven't decided. As for the other yarn-I-will-never-knit, I don't quite know what to do with it yet. Give it away (to who? Would you like some random yarn?)? Sell it on eBay (I'm too lazy for that right now)? Abandon it on the street (nope, it may be unloved yarn, but it's still yarn)? How about you, have you started to accumulate a Core Stash?
Well, so much for resolutions. But I lasted a good month before buying more yarn, that’s something, isn’t it? Not to mention that it was a very LONG month, what with craptastic things happening one after another. So behold my latest yarn acquisition, 4 skeins of Claudia Hand Painted sock yarn from kpixie, in the Stormy Days and Pink Dot colourways. I need more sock yarn like I need a hole in the head, but who could resist this gorgeous stuff?
In the interests of full disclosure, let’s take a look at the rest of the sock yarn stash, shall we? There’s Koigu, Lorna’s Laces, Fleece Artist, and Trekking XXL. Yipes. The Koigu is not necessarily for socks per se, but these are the colourways that were bought in pairs so they could conceivably become socks (or mittens, or scarves, or lace-somethings….). What I’m not showing is all the single skeins of Koigu that I’ve hoarded for other purposes. OK, so I’ve knit precisely 5.5 pairs of socks, and I have enough sock yarn for more than twice that number. But that’s ok, isn’t that what we knitters do? Stockpile yarn for a rainy day?
But it’s not all glorious shopping over here, there is knitting too, albeit very slow knitting. Behold all my WIPs in a pile:
The dark thing is my Edda cardigan, or as I lovingly refer to it, my big blue blob. It’s in the seaming-up and sewing-in-ends stage right now, I sure hope it fits when it’s done. The red thing is my new sweater-in-progress, a sweet little cabled tee from the Holiday 2005 issue of Vogue Knitting. It’s going to be loverly when it’s finished (I hope), but the knitting is such that I can’t lose focus for even one second or else I make horrid mistakes. I'll try to take more detailed pictures later. The yarn is Jaeger Extra Fine Merino Aran, rather squooshy and yummy. The green and purple thing is another Clapotis, in my very favourite and recently discontinued Noro Silk Garden #34. I’ve realized that I could never knit a Noro sweater (too anal about the striping), but I also couldn’t let this colourway disappear off the face of the earth without getting some. So, another Clapotis it is. The knitting is even more boring the second time around, but it’s fun to watch the colour changes. =)
Well, with the New Year, comes new projects. The first thing I should probably do is to go through and do an inventory of all the yarn I already have! Ha ha! But anyway, that can wait...
I started myself a multidirectional scarf out of Noro Silk Garden that I purchased at the Lettuce Knit Boxing Day sale. They were taking 30% off, so I just couldn't resist. Here's what I've got done so far...
At that very same shopping trip, I bought some Lorna's Lace for some socks, but I haven't started those yet either. And the reason why I'm not going to get to for a while is because of....
The Peacock Feathers Shawl. I wasn't able to get the yarn from Lettuce Knit (well, they said they'd order it for me, but they weren't planning to order from Fiddlesticks in a while so they didn't know when that would be), so I ordered it off the web. It arrived yesterday, so I'm itching to start the shawl for my dance teacher. I have until June, so I figured that if I start now I should be okay. Here's a picture of the yarn.
I've also decided to hurry up and wrap up that baby sweater that I was making. I'm pretty much done, but never really felt the drive to complete it. But now one of the medical fellows who sat in my office has become a dad, I figured that I could give it to him! The sweater is knit for a baby about 1 year old, so it'll be a while before he can use it, but it's good incentive to get it done. It's not going to be the best looking sweater, I'll admit, because I didn't really do the best job in doing ths stripes, but oh well. You live and learn. I've learned that if I'm going to knit that sweater again, I'm going to use variagated yarn! Ha ha!!!
Sometime over the Christmas holidays, I completely lost my knitting mojo. It might have been burnout from all the present knitting, or the endless sweater class cardigan being knit in hard-to-see navy blue (which I'm in the middle of seaming, I swear), but knitting just wasn't fun anymore. The wisdom teeth saga might have had something to do with it too (did I tell you that one of the wounds got infected after I returned to Boston? And that I had to have it drained? Fun times). Anyway, Adrienne = not a happy knitter. So to counter the knitting blues, of course I went shopping (before I made the resolutions, I promise!): 
Yummy Handmaiden Cashmere from Colorsong Yarn. A Devin's Toque kit in the Mineral colourway so I could knit a hat for Jason, because he is utterly lacking in winter accessories. If that's not a knitter's siren song, I don't know what is. And plus, cashmere! So, a few days of knitting later: 
A delectably pettable hat. At first I was having serious pooling issues, but then I think my tension changed somewhat and I ended up with this fun swirly pattern. The yarn is super-soft and slippery, and breaks really really easily. I had to be pretty careful with the knitting, even on bamboo needles. But I think it turned out pretty well, it keeps the head warm and wards off wind-induced headaches, so mission accomplished. And we are knitting again, I'll have to list all the UFOs that I'm working on sometime. =)
I'm not normally a very resolution-y sort of person, but this year, I'm turning over a new knitterly leaf. Whereas last year seemed to be all about being a Bad-Ass Knitter, about buying whatever yarn whenever I wanted and not feeling guilty about it, so there (although to be perfectly honest, I still felt guilty), this year is going to be a little different. For one thing, I've catalogued the stash and there's too much of it, I've got yarn exploding everywhere. For another thing, I've started thinking somewhat about the Future, about maybe someday moving beyond this poor-yet-single-and-fancy-free-living-in-the-present existence, and part of moving forward will probably involve not spending money like a drunken sailor (not that I do technically, I never spend more than I have, but let's just say that I could spend less, shall we?). So, here is my current list of Knitty Resolutions for 2006: 1) The stash is not to grow beyond 100 balls of yarn. It is currently at a little over 100 balls, but I am setting that as its maintenance level. 2) To help maintain the stash at a reasonable level, we will start actually knitting from stash instead of finding new and novel things to buy because we are bored with everything we already have. 3) We will stop inventing imaginary projects in order to justify purchasing yarn which is either on sale or newly discontinued. 4) We will try our very hardest to not use shopping for yarn as retail therapy. We will try to find comfort and satisfaction in buying inexpensive or practical things, like, say, scotch tape and tampons. I think that's all for now, it's been 13 days in January (Happy Friday the 13th!) and I haven't bought any yarn yet. Perhaps there is hope after all. =) ETA: I just realized that all those resolutions basically amount to one thing: No more haphazard yarn accumulation. =P
