New Rule

Written January 24, 2011

New Rule

Today is my day off from work.  I just want to lie in bed and knit.  However there are two things that are making me anxious and leaving me sitting by the phone, waiting for the call, “Can you come in today?”  First, my boss threw her back out the other day, literally she coughed and it went out.  It spasms and she is in a great deal of pain, she also has a nice collection of pain killers and muscle relaxers.  So she’s trying to work through it.  The second reason is that the other bookkeeper is pregnant, very pregnant.  She could pop at any time.  In fact, if her water doesn’t break today she’ll have to go in for another sonogram.  I’m expecting overtime this week.  That means less time for knitting. I’m silently crying as I write this.

However the obsessive knitting is going great.  I ordered $100 worth of stuff from KnitPicks.com on Friday.  I am super excited and can’t wait for it to get here.  Let me explain how this poor lady got the $100 to spend on her obsession.  I am a bookkeeper/department assistant manager for a grocery store.  Since I deal with the money end I come across gold colored $1 coins.  So I decided if I had the cash to exchange for a $1 coin, then I would buy the coins.  This keeps me from over spending on unimportant things like food or gas for my car and gives me spending money for my drug habit (just joking mom, it’s all for yarn I swear).  About six or seven months ago I cashed in my coins and went to New York City to visit a friend.  When I got back I started saving the coins again.  Well, when I discovered that I was going to go to Wichita and potentially go to some yarn stores I cashed in my coins again, $186 dollars to spend on whatever my heart desires.  I decided that almost all of it needed to go to knitting related stuff.  In Wichita I got some yarn, some pattern books, and Stephanie Pearl-Mcphee’s book Yarn Harlot.  But I still had over $100 bucks!  So I went online. . .  I’ll go over that inventory when it arrives.  And just so you know, I love KnitPicks.com. 

So the title of this blog is New Rule.  In a previous blog I mentioned that I started a new project, Morning Frost Wrap from Stitch Nation.  It’s going well, about sixteen inches into the first half of the scarf I found a mistake. I tinked and kept going, found another mistake, tinked again.  I spent most of yesterday tinking.  I’m now back up to sixteen inches.  As you may not know, I have about a gazillion hibernating WIPs.  So I decided that my new rule is “Before starting a new project, I must pull out a lonely, long forgotten project and finish it.”  Phew, that kind of hurts and/or is kind of scary to say.  I have LOTS of projects that just need ends sewn in or separate parts need to be sewn together.  Why do I have to hate that part so much?  I made a pair of mittens once, alligator mittens from Stitch n Bitch: Stitch Nation.  There is a body and a red mouth.  They lie there in the plastic bag, waiting to be sewn together.  The frustrating thing about this new rule is I got the pattern yesterday for Lettuce Knit Arm warmers, another amazing pattern for Stitch Nation yarns.  I have been drooling over that pattern ever since the Stitch Nation yarns were sold at my LYS, Hobby Lobby.  However they didn’t sell the right kind of yarn for the pattern!  While in Wichita I found the right yarn!  WOOT!  Here’s the kicker, I won’t allow myself to start on this project until I finish an old project.  Seriously, I have a dresser, christened the Craft Dresser.  The top drawer is full of “sew the ends in” projects.  The second drawer is full of art supplies, the third has beading and hemp jewelry stuff, and the bottom is overflowing with cross-stitch stuff.  An entire top drawer designated to stuff that is 99.9% done.  Mostly it’s ball band dishcloths, but some of the other projects are things I made in my first year of knitting, knitted items that I no longer care for.  It’s sad, I know.  I can see the mistakes that my newbie knitting eyes couldn’t see before.  Weird color combos, and yes, 100% acrylic stuff that looks bad.  I know I said I wasn’t a yarn snob, well I’m trying not to be a snob, but really, that pink scarf with the green stripe just looks crappy.  The pink is the acrylic, the green is 100% wool, and what was I thinking?  My tip to the new knitter, don’t mix fiber types unless you know, like really know what you are doing.  Maybe today I should clean out that drawer.  Today is suppose to be my day off and tomorrow is trash day.  *sigh*