I Know How To Do That

On Sunday, we were curled up on the couch together, Ian and I, and he was mesmerized watching me knit. He, being a sophisticated eight year old, knows everything there is, and if he doesn't, "my mind tells me". It was no surprise when he stated,
"I know how to do that."

He began wiggling his hands around in a passable imitation of the smooth movements he'd been watching for the last half hour. So I decided the time was ripe to hand him a pair of needles and some yarn. I taught him a basic cast on, and he proceeded to fill the needle with it.



He is catching on pretty quickly and I'm prouder of him than I can even express. And guess what? All he wants to do now is knit. He even sometimes forgets to dress up in his knight costume before he starts.

The scarf in progress:



He, of course, is focused on the day when he will knit his own fish hat. So am I, actually. Somebody else to knit up all my stash.

Busted!

I'm starting my spring clean here a little early, and that means I've got to clear out old stash. I've been knitting & crocheting for 10 years now, and have lived in this home for nearly seven years... so it's long overdue. I cleared out space in my upstairs stash last fall (for new yarn, not using up old yarn of course), when I started my Christmukkah knitting- that is, the stash in the white bins. And a little bit from the box in the closet.

Last night I cleared out the furnace room. I won't miss the yarn, but the part that bothered me was finding four abandoned projects. Three of them were hideous (in my defense, my son picked out the yarn for one. I got tired of putting on my sunglasses to knit) and for one I had run out of yarn. One count of poor planning (and then abandoning the yarn), and three counts of idiocy. That's a little disheartening but they were really, really old projects, and I'm much better at controlling my urge to buy gaudy yarns.

Today I moved my white bins into the furnace room and tried to empty the space in the laundry room... and take a close look at what's in the linen closet... and then there's that little space behind the desk... the long and short of it is, good project or bad project, cute or ugly, I found a gazillion more UFO's (my husband likes to call them yarn orphans) and an ugly truth about myself. I usually don't finish things. (Ok, I do have some wonderful FO's & I remeber giving lots of them as gifts...) And no matter how much I have, I keep on adding, adding, adding until I get to the point where I can't imagine even trying to use up everything I have. I realized this is not just about yarn, it runs much deeper into every nook and cranny of myself... and it's worth repenting of, I think...

Even though the Malabrigo Lace is calling to me from its drawer I think I am going to do some serious stashbusting and that will probably involve many socks, hats and mitts because I also seem to have difficulty buying more than a couple of balls of any one thing at a time. Except, apparently, chenille. Yikes! What do I do with five pounds of chenille in various weights? And when I bought all that cotton, how many dishcloths did I think the world could USE?

I think I can thank Ravelry for being a place where I can keep on top of myself and stay on track with my stash & projects- I finished (almost) all my gift knitting last fall, thanks to my Ravelry page.

er... anyone want some purple chenille? White? Pink? Blue? Teal?....