Spring Cleaning

In an effort to better prepare for 2009, (I know, nothing like getting an early jump on things by planning for 2009 in March of 2009) Jeff and I spent a good part of Saturday doing some cleaning/ unpacking/ decrapping of the house. While this is not an ideal way for me to spend a rare Saturday off (which was only finagled by begging people to switch around their shifts), it proved to be a worthwhile way to spend a Saturday, not every Saturday, but every now and then, it doesn't hurt.

After sending about 8 boxes of clothing to Goodwill, and realizing exactly how little of my wardrobe I actually wear, I set about attempting to organize my knitting. In the spirit of cleaning out my closet, I took a hard look at a couple of my projects, and determined that I would be more likely to restart the whole thing than ever finish the current one. Sadly, one of the projects that fell into this category was the banded peasant blouse, which, despite my enthusiastic start and overall love of the project, was over shadowed by my poor yarn selection. The yarn did not work with the pattern, and I ended up throwing the whole thing away with only about five inches left to go. I may restart this someday, with a better yarn choice, but we're going to put it on the maybe pile for right now, and not even add it back to my ravelry queue. Another such project was my Cheshire Cat Stole, which was going reasonably well, considering that it was my first real lace project (and my first project with beads). However, the process was set aside first for the move, then for Christmas knitting, then because I stepped on and broke one of the needles, then for the baby blankets, and during all the setting aside time, someone, (I suspect Minerva) take the project and remove half the stitches from the cable. I couldn't bring myself to sort out the mess of dropped stitches, and thus gave up. It actually felt like a bit of a weight was lifted off of me, by allowing myself to give up on these projects, I eased the guilt I was feeling about not wanting to work on the projects.

Progress on the new projects is going well. I am about halfway done with the raglan increases for the lily cardigan, and have just finished the gusset decreases on the second diagonal rib sock. I've chosen the next pattern (show-off stranded socks) and yarn (Sunshine yarn's twist in Weezley Wizard Wheezes) for my next pair of socks, which provides the motivation to keep working on the current pair of socks. (I may not have much self-discipline, but I only allow myself to work on one pair of socks at a time.

I'll update with pictures of the latest projects soon!

Whew!

The baby blankets are done! And they have been finished before either baby arrived. Granted I was cutting it pretty close, considering that Petra's due date is next week. However, Petra's blanket is all packed up and ready to mail tomorrow and Silas's blanket has just been removed from my needles.

I'm happy to be done, and think I'm going to spend a little time knitting for myself. Someday, I would like to finish the banded peasant blouse, but of course that will not be my focus. Instead I'm going to cast on for the Lily Cardigan, and continue to work on my sock collection. After the Lily cardigan is finished, I've got a long list of pieces that I would like to work on, including trying lace knitting once again. No matter what I work on though, I'd like to knit up some of my stash yarn before purchasing any more yarn. Moving all my yarn in November really proved to me how much yarn I have. I also now have my sock yarn sitting out in baskets in the computer room, which serves as a daily reminder not to buy more sock yarn.