I’ll wait to go to the store

Yesterday, after getting together the shocking list of all that is unknit and must be knit, I discovered that I have no yarn. Well, that’s not true, obviously… I mean, I have rather a lot of yarn. It turns out though, that when I went into the stash with the list of things that I wanted to make, to see what I had to make it out of, everything was unacceptable. Here’s a great example.  I decided that I’d start the parade of Christmas knits with one of the little sweaters that needs making. I chose a pattern – it’s the Baby and Child Sophisticate, all I needed was a little bit of worsted weight yarn, and surely that’s in the stash, right?

I went into the stash, and found about 10 yarns that could work, and rejected them all for some reason or another, and then started making a list of what I needed to go to the yarn shop for.  I put “500m of worsted” at the top of the list.  Since I was stuck without that, I decided I’d start the cowl.  I went into the stash for that… and about 20 minutes later I’d rejected everything I had and added yarn for that to the list. This continued for a while, until essentially speaking, I’d decided that none of the yarn I have now would work for anything and I’d need to buy more for everything, which totally defeats the purpose of a stash.  It’s not supposed to be an untouchable collection… it’s supposed to be my own private yarn store. A pre-planned smorgasbord of yarns that I love, and it turns out that’s the problem.

It turns out that mostly I love this stuff, that’s why I bought it,  and I don’t want it to be gone, and I think that if I knit it it will be gone, which it will be, but the point was to use it to make things, not to hug it and kiss it and call it George. There will be, I said to myself, as I stood in the stash, and thought things over, other yarns. Yarns I love as much as these yarns.  So, I didn’t go to the yarn store today. I stood there in the stash, and I looked for some proper freakin’ generosity in my heart, and lo and behold, the yarn I needed was there after all, as long as I was willing to part with it.

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Two skeins of Longmeadow Farm merino, in a gorgeous colour called “Brick and Mortar” (that I totally would look great in) that is soft, and lovely and will suit my little nephew to a tee.  I started knitting straight away so that I couldn’t change my mind, and I love how it feels, and I’m trying to remember that knitting it up is more than half of the pleasure of having it. I’m still having pangs as I go along, but yarn is for using, and for keeping people warm and this yarn was doing none of that in the stash, and now it’s meeting a noble destiny. It’s not supposed to be there so I can stand in the middle of it all and say “Mine, Mine, nobody else’s.”

frankiesweaterstartball 2015-11-27

Besides. Maybe there will be enough left over to make me a hat.