Messy Cabin Fever

The weather still sucks. I mean, it is still February, so I should probably just take it in stride, but really? Ick. So ready for spring.

We continued to have snow and ice and record-breaking cold all last week, to the point where I “officially” only worked 6 hours the whole week. Then Saturday we got the biggest snowstorm of the year by far, and by lunchtime my yard and most of the things in it had nearly disappeared.

It continued to snow until some time after I went to sleep. While those of you who have only ever lived up north are probably laughing at these pictures, those of you who have lived around here know we genuinely have no way of coping with this level of snow around here, except for the good old “stay inside until it goes away” method. At least there’s been plenty of good food.

And with all the extra time at home and only so many hours of grading and planning I can stand in a day, there’s been plenty of knitting. I actually got to the point where I’m in a weird lull between designs, so I’ve picked up this behemoth of insanity again.

That may also have been inspired by how darn cold it is. Seems like perfect blanket making weather to me.

Messy Sleeve

Pretty sure I can blame this one on the dog, actually. Too much slobber and fluff for the usual suspect… unless he’s been teaching her. Sigh.

Messy Time Away

I went out of town this weekend to co-host a retirement party for a relative, and Remy the feline Destroyer of Homes clearly did not approve. I tucked all my knitting (except what I brought along, of course) neatly away before I left, but guess what I came home to?

That was an almost new ball of mohair blend and about half a sweater front. I don’t believe I have a word for what it was when I got home. Gentle sobbing probably about covers it. Remy, of course, was no where to be found.

Seriously, look at this! Did I mention it’s mohair? Did I mention that it’s the same mohair sweater I had to unravel another piece of last week? It’s really a testament to my ironclad self-control that we still have a (living) cat. It took me the better part of a hockey game to get the stupid yarn rewound, and there’s definitely a nasty chewed bit that I may wind up cutting out. I think this project will be spending another stretch in timeout.

Messy Stress Knitting

My life is the messy bit right now, between having surprise-hosted Easter yesterday, the exhausting family dramas that caused and resulted from surprise-hosting Easter yesterday, the surprise late frost last night (poor garden!), and a bit of serious yuck at work today. Unfortunately, the main knitting projects I have going right now are both my own design, and thus nowhere near mindless or comforting. What’s a stressed knitter to do?

Can you hear it? It says, “Christinaaaa…come and knit meeee!”

There’s a responsible part of me that doesn’t want to cast on yet another project, even if that awesome self-striping sock yarn in my stash is calling my name. There’s another part of me that knows if I don’t have something mindless to knit on at times like this, I won’t knit at all. Maybe spinning. That could be mindless and meditative. If the wool cooperates.

What’s your go-to stress craft?

Messy Ouch

Perhaps I shouldn’t use this bag for transporting sock WIPs anymore. Ouch.

Messy Plying

I have a snow day, because Virginia is awesome like that. MOAR HOURS TO KNIT!! I’ve been doing some plying too, but my jeans are not getting along with the built-in lazy kate.

 

The singles keep getting caught on them. The cat is also obnoxiously excited by the sound the singles make as they whip across my jeans. He’s been very “helpful”. Considering all the other issues this first project on the wheel has had, I think it’s time to accept defeat and go knit.

Messy Little Frustrations

The Black Hole is still chugging along largely unchanged, and I’ve reached a point where I’m growing suspicious I will run out of yarn for my Hatteras Hat. I’ve stopped knitting on it in the hopes my yarn will magically breed while it’s resting. Or something.

 

Additionally, I have a coworker I work closely with who is expecting a baby in February. I’d been starting to suss out what her nursery is like and get a feel for what baby knits she might want, thinking I should get on that soon. Well, turns out the school is going to have a baby shower for her in mid-December. As in like, 2 weeks from now. I have absolutely no pattern picked or yarn bought, let alone project started. Crap.

This is a week where knitting does not feel good. Time to do something else, I think.

P.S. Christine Guest is giving away a copy of my pattern Lovely. Hop on over to her blog if you want to enter to win!

Messy Black Holes

I went away over the weekend, and didn’t really expect to get a whole lot done. After all, we had lots of fun stuff planned for the weekend, both historical:

 

and decidedly seasonal:

 

 

None of the things we had planned were really knitting friendly, so I didn’t pack too much. However. Awesome Husband offered to drive both there and back, which means I got about 6 solid hours of knitting time in. I was a little extra nervous about running out of knitting now, but it turns out I needn’t have worried. Apparently I have stumbled across a knitting black hole. You know those projects where you knit for hours and hours and hours and never seen any appreciable change?

 

Yup. Where the heck do all those stitches go? It sure doesn’t seem to be into the WIP. I’m pretty sure the only reasonable explanation is that I’ve created a black hole. Clearly all the stitches I make are getting sucked into it, which is why I never see them again.

Maybe I should cast on for a new sweater. You know, just to teach this one a lesson.

Messy Cave: Progress

The post below is a follow up to this one:

We are working hard to prevent the office in our new home from becoming the Cave the last one was. Hubby is slowly but surely building us some lovely bookshelves that will hopefully actually be able to hold all our books, and in the mean time he has built this:

I have it sorted by weight, with no spot for lace weight because I never really use it, and the last spot for my spinning fiber stash. The yarn I’ve unpacked doesn’t completely jibe with the yarn I have cataloged on Ravelry, but I’m not entirely sure if that means I’m still missing boxes of yarn somewhere or if I just haven’t been updating Rav properly when I use things up. Either way it’s become very evident just how much I favor fingering and worsted weight yarns. Time to start using those up!

Of course, since there is a cat in the house, within hours this had happened:

The good news is, I think he scared himself in the process. Hopefully he’ll leave the shelves alone now.

Messy Cave

We have a room in our apartment I refer to as The Cave. It started out as my office space, and then mine and Hubby’s office space, and then it just sort of exploded. Between my expanding stash and Hubby’s brewing gear and Hubby’s military gear and all the books that no longer fit on our bookcases, there’s barely room to walk in there anymore. It’s become the cat’s favorite room, but I tend to stay out of it as much as possible.

The problem is, The Cave is where my stash lives. Or lived. It started out innocently enough, in two little boxes like this:

Not incredibly neat, but organized by fiber type and tucked away out of sight. Then the yarn and pattern books/magazines no longer fit in the same place, so I added this:

Eventually The Cave got to be such a maze than new yarn began to go elsewhere rather than having to navigate it.

A friend got me a lovely little “yarning box” as she called it, which I put by my knitting spot on the couch, and that quickly filled with yarn too.

Then it filled a little more.

Of course, the needles and notions collection bred when I wasn’t looking too. It now requires two very messy boxes as well.

Guys, my stash is out of control. Some of it is sweater-quantities for specific projects that are already planned. A few skeins are random pretties I just couldn’t resist bringing home. However, the overwhelming majority are partial skeins leftover from old projects. I can’t bear to waste most of a skein, but I can’t re-sell an open skein either and I just don’t know how to use them myself. I like the thought of a scrap blanket but I know myself well enough to know it’s probably not ever going to happen.

Luckily, I am moving next weekend. Our new home will have more room, and hopefully I can build myself a proper organizational system and start getting this stuff under control! Got any hot tips or suggestions?