I <3 Organizing

Wes wants to get bowls of bubble-eyed goldfish to fill in the extra shelf space. I'd better hurry up and buy more bins and fill them with yarn! :) those fish creep me out! anyway, mostly I am happy to have some organization and to not have a blank wall anymore!! I still leave clessedra all over my chair, but at least all the other projects are put away. the before picture isn't even that bad because I cleaned on Friday. before that, there were all sorts of books and yarn scraps and other patterns under the little round table on the left. now the books are stacked and I have a folder to organize loose patterns.
the calla lily picture is way cheap at IKEA and I picked it because I had calla lilies at our wedding ... those are all wedding pictures surrounding the larger flower picture. awww ...

dishcloths and storage. the joys of non-homeownership.

I am really enjoying making the dishcloths! Well, dishcloth. So far it's just the one. But it is always nice to have a little project to work on when I have ten or twenty or sixty minutes to kill in the car. (No, I don't knit while driving, though I wish we had a train or lightrail or something I could take to work. All the Denver people who were on their way home from work while we were on our way to the Rockies game looked very relaxed and content on the lightrail reading books.)
Anyway, this linen yarn is a little crazy. As Charlie at AFY was winding it for me (by hand, after it jumped the spool!), a woman sitting at the work table commented how there is no give in the yarn and I didn't get it until I started knitting and realized there is no give in the yarn. (perceptive, aren't I?) It's also a lot rougher than I am used to and I think if I knit dishcloths for the duration of time I knit socks or sweaters in the evenings, I would rub my fingers raw, but I can handle it for an hour or less a day. I am really anxious to get this first cloth finished so I can throw it in the wash. Supposedly the yarn gets softer and softer with every washing, like the flour sack towels I embroidered for Grandma a few Christmases ago.
ALSO, Wes and I have come to the realization that we won't be out of this apartment by Christmas like we'd hoped, so I have taken on the task of making our apartment more livable and am actually decorating and organizing things a little better. My task for tonight while Wes is golfing with the boys (weird how he sees my girlfriend's boyfriends more than I see my girlfriends), is to drag out one of the bookshelves we originally stuck in the black hole of storage and use it to organize my knitting. With (over) three projects on the needles right now, I am spread out all over the living room, which Wes just loves. I ran to Target on my lunchbreak today and got some cute, cheap plastic bins that will fit perfectly on the shelves and are deep enough to hold, hopefully, a whole brown hoodie in progress. The lids snap on and have handles, so it will be easy to transport projects too, if, for example, I decide I want to take something larger than dishcloths on the road trip to San Francisco this weekend. (also at Target right now, totally amazing OFFICE products. I am now the totally proud owner of an "I *heart* Jim" mousepad and pens featuring Michael and Dwight-isms. LOVE IT.)

more new projects!!

soooooooooooooo guess who went to the yarn store today and got two skeins of fabulously cranky linen yarn (in colors 55 and 48) to make dishcloths from a new book I got at the library (yay free books! more money for yarn!). The book is appropriately titled Knitter's Stash, as I have now started my own little stash of current on-the-needles projects. They aren't even all listed in the sidebar to the left ... I think I would depress myself if I had them all listed. But most of these dishcloth patterns are about 60 stitches across and even with some fun lacy patters, I should be able to just whip out a few on lunch break knitting. All my other projects are sort of cumbersome and I don't really like dragging them out to my car every morning on the off chance that I'll have some free time to knit during the day. Then I bring everything back upstairs at the end of the day to work on while Wes watches baseball, or I am home alone knitting to avoid housework after eight hours of sitting in a cube. So, these dishcloths, which require no fancy tools (cable needles, etc), can just live in my car all the time, so I will never be without a project to work on while I'm waiting for Wes to meet me for dinner, or on a lunchbreak or I don't know what else, but it seems like I do a lot of sitting in my car.

P.S. Today the new knitty came out, just a day after I discovered all those new patterns at zepherstyle ... what are they trying to do to me??

starting the stash ...

Every time a read about another knitter's out-of-control stash (Yarn Harlot has a whole chapter about how to hide your stash from your family), I am a little smug. Proud of myself for (most of the time) controlling my urges to buy yarn until I have a firm project in mind, and the time to devote to the project. I do have one plastic bin of knitting stuff, but aside from housing my extra needles, pattern books and other tools, mostly it is extra yarn left over from finished projects and one or two rejected WIPs that I got bored of (2x2 rib scarf? come on!) or I tried on before the final finishes and realized it didn't fit, but couldn't bring myself to start over. All that smugness when straight out the window on Saturday when I drove up to Santa Barbara to visit BB's Knits retirement sale. Everything in the store was 50% off and my stash is well on it's way to getting out of control unless I take a few months off work to knit my butt off. Unfortunately, "stash reducing" is not a viable reason to call in sick.
I initially went to BB's because the store was listed on Jordana Paige's website for places to buy her knitters satchel. I am drooling over the ocean blue version, but it is a little pricey and I wanted to see the bag in person before purchasing. When I looked at BB's website for directions to the store, lo and behold! 50% off sale! I thought I could get my satchel at a well-reduced price ... of course by the time I got up there, the bags were sold out (some at 50% she said! bummer!), but there were plenty of other goodies left, and I certainly didn't leave empty handed. BB herself even took a peek in my bag as I was winding down and said I did a good job!!
Here's what I left with:
Patterns - Two (2) Fiber Trends sock patterns, Winter issue of Knit.1 magazine with some way cute patterns I had been drooling over since January, Miss Bea's Rainy Day patterns for Rowan yarns by Louisa Harding, Cabin Fever #153 (baby socks!)
Yarn - Eight (8) balls of Classic Elite Bamboo in China blue (hoping to use it for Sizzle, but I didn't have the pattern with me and guessed too low on yardage so will save the bamboo for something else glorious), Four (4) balls of Regia Silk sock yarn (two balls each yellow and pink), Six (6) balls of Rowan All-Seasons Cotton in Dusk (actual yarn is more purple than on website) to make a coat from Miss Bea's pattern book for my someday daughter, Four (4) balls of Whispers sock yarn in colors 04 and 08, One (1) ball of Artful Yarns - Olympic in color Atlanta, which I am going to try and make the baby socks out of for cousin Sheila's baby girl on the way. I am not really sure if that is supposed to be sock yarn though ...
Also - six abalone star shaped buttons for the little girl's coat and six sparkly pink buttons to adorn these socks, once I make them ...
wow! that's a lot of yarn to stash away while I finish up Sahara and mom's shawl ... but it was fun to visit a new store, even if I probably won't ever go back, and especially nice to have lunch with my handsome husband at work :) maybe I'll have to make another trip to BB's before the end of the month (to get more Bamboo, perhaps?) ... I do love to see Wes in uniform! yowza!