Summer Makes You Forget Reality

These are my Spiral Boot Socks:
Aren't they cute? I really like how the pattern is going so far. But there is a problem. Do you have any idea what the problem is? (If you notice a knitting mistake, please let me continue in my blissful ignorance). The problem is that they are black.

Why is that a problem?
Meet Fenway.

Fenway is very adorable, if I do say so myself. He is spending the summer with my mom, her two cats, and her dog while I'm living somewhere where I can't have a cat. This absence has made me forget about how much Fenway sheds. My pretty spiral boot socks look pristine now, but after 5 minutes around Fenway, they will be an absolute mess. I'll never get the cat fur out of the yarn overs.

I guess that's an incentive to hurry up and finish the socks so that I can wear them once while they are still black and fur-free.

Work in Progress

No, I'm not talking about my knitting. However, now that you mention it, I have two projects on the needles: Traveling Vines Scarf by Cari Luna and Spiral Boot Socks by Veronik Avery. Both designers are amazing. I sent them questions about their patterns, and they both replied to me very quickly and were friendly and helpful. I only have a couple of inches of each project, so after I have knitted a bit more I'll take some pictures.

The WIP that the title of this post actually refers to is the blog itself. I've changed the template for now. In the future (possibly not until the start of next semester), I'll be adding more content in the sidebars. Please be patient with me as I slowly get this blog exactly how I want it.

I apologize for two posts without pictures. I don't plan on that being the norm.

First Post: Stash

Welcome to my new knitting blog! I decided to separate it from my regular blog so that I can focus on other things there.

I think it is only appropriate that the first thing I talk about here is stash. Stash is a big topic in the knitting world. It seems to me that everyone on Ravelry has a stash. Me? I've decided that I want to get rid of my (comparatively meager) stash.

I can almost hear the collective gasp that came from everyone reading that sentence. Hear me out first before you decide that I'm completely nuts, although that characterization probably isn't that inaccurate. I have quite a scrapbooking stash. Do you know what I do with it? If you have any sort of stash, you probably know the answer- it just sits there. I hate looking at my huge stash because it reminds me that I do not scrapbook very often anymore. It stresses me out. I want to get rid of some of it, but then I feel guilty because it represents so much money.

I want to kick my yarn stash in the butt before it stresses me out. I'm not 100% sure what I have in my stash at school, but I believe that I have less than 20 skeins. That's not too bad. When I get back to my apartment and am reunited with my entire stash, I plan to go through it all, get rid of everything I don't like, and put projects for the remainder of my yarn in my Ravelry queue.

I was listening to the Knit Picks podcast with the Yarn Harlot (Episode 58), and I totally agree with what the Yarn Harlot said about stash:

If we think of the stash as like a collection. If we think of ourselves as collectors, and think of this as a collection of inspiration and resources, then it only makes sense to have the stuff in there that you love.

I love this idea of stash as the best of the best. I don't want a stash; I want an inspirational collection that will become projects sooner rather than later.