stash issues, then ravelry

In the past week I have impulsively purchased yarn, totaling about $110. I can afford it, that's fine. I just wish I was better at controlling myself. I guess the upside is that everything I have bought has been stalked for months prior to actual purchase. So, not so impulsively, but I guess I first could have taken a good, long look at all the laceweight yarn gathering larvae in my stash. No matter! One must always have more, even if it means owning another huge lacy shawl that costs seventy bucks and takes four months to knit and will only be worn twice. Okay, I guess only the cashmere shawl has suffered such overly ginger treatment. But still.

On the sweater front, I've been knitting away steadily at the sweater yarns I've accumulated, sort of in last-in, first-out basis. I'm not yet willing to face the absurd, ill-reasoned yarns that I bought in my first years of knitting, sweaty-palmed and light-headed. ("Son of a gun! I'm buying a thousand yards of orange cotton boucle! I have really arrived!") I have tentative plans for all sweaterish stash items, but since I am trying to narrow it down to just one WIP (remember that?) I can't cast on for anything. Thank goodness for ravelry, or I would forget all my good intentions.

You know, I used to do something akin to a ravelry queue back in the pre-ravel days. We had this weekly meeting at work, and there would always be this ten minute lull as we shifted gears halfway through, and I would take that time to write out lists for myself:

OTN: on the needles

PF: pour faire (the what's next list)

LR: long-range (mere speculation about what the future may hold)

TF: to finish (all the bits that just need blocking, sewing, or ends woven)

When you juggle multiple projects like I do, it helps to take inventory on a regular basis. And since I am practicing for my life as a spinster aunt, I would use this list to determine what I needed to get done the following weekend. It doesn't do to keep writing down the same projects in the "to finish" list. A certain item can only remain "OTN" for so long.

Every now and then, there is the devilishly enjoyable "To Rip" list. That list almost always gets finished first. Boy, do I LOVE to rip. It's fun to show those stupid stitches who's boss every once in a while. And I have never EVER regretted ripping out a project, even the ones that are completely finished but fail to satisfy me. Better to have the exciting prospect of casting on something new (tonight!) with that cursed yarn, than to watch the ill-fitting, star-crossed item collect dust on top of the knitting basket. This tendency is probably why it's best that I remain a childless spinster aunt. What if these were actual living beings that were entrusted to my care?!

I still have to go to that infernal weekly meeting, and so I still sometimes make out the list, but it feels like I'm sort of duplicating the stuff I keep track of on ravelry. So in a way, ravelry has stolen away that little piece of knitting-related usefulness that I was injecting into my otherwise non-knitful (aka worthless) workday. Now I make lists of Things to Cook That Will Help Clear the Pantry (I stockpile staples then forget to use them) or Things I Really Ought to Clean Already, or the general Shit List of people I feel like pushing down the stairs on that particular day. (It always helps just to get that sort of thing out of my head, so I can think about something else.) Now I'm not saying that ravelry has ruined my life and taken away the one joy I have, quite the opposite, in fact. It has given me freedom to stop making the same lists over and over, because if I need to know what pattern caught my eye on Tuesday, and on whose blog I saw it, I know exactly where to look (my Q) and that is frickin' awesome. It's like a PDA devoted entirely to knitting!

And yes, I have a smart phone. I don't know what I would do without it. If I lost it? If it died on me? Well you won't get a call from me for a while, because I never actually wrote your number down... sorry. Actually, I should say: a smart phone has ME. And it lets me check ravelry on it.