Knitting Revelations

My knitting habit has been badly stalled. This is due to a few factors, but mostly I've hit a block. I have all this stashed yarn and mountains of patterns that were given to me by a retiring knitter, yet I don't know what to knit with it. The scary part is that K and I have purged this stash twice! The previously purged yarn has been passed on to the Red Cross Volunteer Knitters in our town. They appreciate it. They actually knit with it. It's better for them to have it. I've done the same thing with my embarrassingly large collection of patterns. I've purged to the Goodwill. Twice. There are still too many patterns in my bin.

So yesterday, in my basement, with Christmas decorations still floating about waiting to be put away, I got ambitious. I purged almost all of the yarn and nearly all of the patterns. I soothed the hoarder in myself by justifying with the Internet: any pattern I liked and wanted to keep, I had to look for on the Internet. If it was there, I had to get rid of the hard copy. I was ruthless. I tempted the shopper in me by promising myself purchases: once I found something I loved and wanted to knit, then I would purchase the yarn I need. I have recycled half of the patterns and I have bagged up the rest to donate. There is a large green garbage bag full of yarn sitting in my hallway ready to haul to Red Cross today.

To impede any second thoughts, I immediately filled up my knitting bin with the Christmas decorations. It is furthermore known as 'the Christmas bin' and it occupies the only space available for said bin. I am happy with this new organizational step I've taken. There's peace with my decision and there's anticipation. I'm very much looking forward to finding the perfect thing to knit. Or crochet. Because I kept all of my needles and hooks. And notions. I wouldn't get rid of everything! What a small amount of space my knitting supplies now occupy on an alternate basement shelf.

I found the yellow cloth bin after my purge and I've managed to fit all of my kept yarn in it. There's one ball of crochet cotton, as I like to make snowflake ornaments. There's enough Irish Aran wool to make a sizeable project, so I kept that. As well, some unlabeled fine cream coloured wool. It's very soft so it must have some cashmere or angora or something of the sort to it. Again, enough to make a project of some sort. The two blue balls are washable acrylic but feel like angora, so I kept them. They match my winter coat, so I might get a pair of mittens out of them if I ever get ambitious. K liked the red, leftover from her Santa hat, so we kept that as well. Then, there are various skeins of an acrylic boucle. On my to-do list is to scour the pages of Ravelry to see if I can find a pattern to use it up on. I'm thinking Christmas gifts for my poor, struggling siblings and their significant others.

Oh, but I'm not done yet! So, the stash is pared to next-to-nothing proportions. I have no room to expand my new small collection, as the shelf space is re-assigned. What else can there be, you ask? Check out these new websites I found.

Ravelry Ok, it's not new. If you've not yet signed up and you are even just interested in sticks and string and knotting it together, sign up! There is a treasure trove on inspiration and instruction.

Mason-Dixon Knitting A knitting blog that is hilarious to read. They are leaps and bounds beyond my personal knitting ability, but they are entertaining and for me, that's motivation.

Organized Knitting This is a new blog, spun off from a Ravelry group. If you have any voyeuristic tendencies at all, you'll enjoy seeing people's personal solutions to knitting chaos. If you have no knitting interest whatsoever and are more to the OCD side of the spectrum, you'll enjoy all the pictures of bins and baskets and labels. I'm not totally sold on this blog yet, but as it's new, I'll keep checking in (with Google Reader, of course) to see where it goes.

Sock Pixie A blog, yet more. This is a mother-daughter team that sells sock yarn. I haven't bought any yet, but the colours they use are reason enough to stop by and poke around. Free patterns are regularly posted in case you're interested in trying out some fancy foot work. Sock Pixie has just recently posted two of the cutest baby slipper patterns I've come across.

Ok, now I'm done.