I'm amazed I'm up and about, right now. It is just past 7:30, and I did not go to bed until nearly 2:00. The baby went down to sleep around 12:30 - I just stayed up, reading blogs, and knitting. I suppose I should probably be doing accounts, or something, right now, but I'm sort of expecting KatyBeth to wake up any time now, wanting to be fed. So, instead, I'm blogging and knitting. Totally not knitting what I *should* be knitting, though - I ought to be working on the cabled afghan I have on the needles, but instead I'm working on the second sleeve of a casual sweater I'm making, largely as a stash-busting measure.
You know what is greatly ironic? I thought I didn't have a particularly big stash, until I started to inventory it. The majority of my stash is yarn leftover from previous projects, with just a few instances of yarn from projects that I decided not to do, after all, or that I just never got to. I have one cabinet that holds yarn in the upper portion (the single drawer at the bottom contains sewing stuff), and one large knitting bag (with extendable handle and wheels, a Christmas present from my parents, a couple years ago) that isn't even full. So, I thought my stash fairly small. Then, I got a ball winder and a swift, and began estimating yardage based on swift circumference and number of revolutions, as I wound my collapsing leftover skeins into the neat "cakes" that a ballwinder produces, and began entering it all into Ravelry. I used the export feature to get a spreadsheet, and added a formula to total up the contents. The result was... (are you ready for this? The drum roll, please...)... 12.9 MILES of yarn. And now the real kicker - I'm not DONE logging yet. I think I see lots of afghans in my future...
I think I may be heading into an absolute knitting frenzy, anyway, though - I'm about three quarters through the second sleeve of my plain green stockinette drop-shouldered "jeans" sweater, and the body is already on the needles, and about 10 inches long. Yes, I know that would be at least half done, for a lot of people, but I'm six feet tall. I think I need to spend one of KB's naps working on that afghan, and I just checked Big Girl Knits out from the library, yesterday. Those who know me are now raising a skeptical eyebrow, because I've always been on the slender side. Even now, still carrying that last 10 pounds of pregnancy weight, I don't qualify as "big". Well, here's the deal: it isn't for making stuff for me. I have a few friends that are more voluptuously shaped than I, one of which hates most of her wardrobe, but 1) can't really afford to replace it all, right now (who can, really?) and 2) falls into the "I'll buy some better clothes, when I lose more weight" trap. I keep telling her that she needs at least a couple of clothing items that she likes, and feels good in, RIGHT NOW - that she has been working too hard at losing the weight she's already dropped to get psychologically dragged down by having to wear clothing that she detests and that make her feel dumpy, all the time. She's been rather resistant to this logic, however, so I've decided on another strategy - MAKE her something that is designed to flatter her curves. She's a gift-y enough person that she'll adore pretty much anything I make for her, so the wearing of it is pretty much guaranteed - heck, I'll bet she's got her children's old macaroni art still displayed, somewhere. (: So anyway, there it is - I'm a knitter... on a mission...