Yarny Goodness Overload

Yesterday, the postman knocked on my door and left this box of yarny goodness.

Brooklyn Tweed Shelter in Long Johns - enough to knit Stowe
















and Loft in Fossil, Woodsmoke and Thistle for Tungata.





Now, what to do?

Swatch for Stowe?

Cast on Tungata?

Finish Color Affection?  (I just got to the spot where you add the third color and start the short rows.)

Take pictures of everything, update my Ravelry project page, and blog?*


So much yarny goodness!


* I chose the last because I'm trying to be more organized about my knitting in 2013 and I couldn't decide between the other options.  I'm a little nervous to branch beyond garter stitch - not sure if I'm ready, but I won't know unless I try.

Knitting through grief

I wrote the entry below on January 28th.  It's taken me a few weeks to be able to post it.  I wasn't sure if  I was going to post it, but here it is...

Well, it was a sucky end to 2012 and a craptastic start to 2013.

I remember the Yarn Harlot writing about “the time of the big not knitting” when her family was going through a difficult time of grief and she just could not bring herself to knit.   

I thought that might happen to me.  But my grief and knitting are different – which shouldn’t surprise me, we are all unique human beings.  But somehow it does. 

Today it’s been a month since my father died. 

I have knit since Daddy’s death.  Garter stitch.  The first project “back” I call the “Great Garter Stitch Scarf of Grief”.  200 yards of bulky Noro knit on size 11 needles. 


With that finished, I started another Color Affection shawl.  I don’t usually knit the same pattern more than once, but it spoke to me.  I  got a shipment from Sundara of petitie sock yarn that I had ordered before Christmas.  The colors weren’t quite what I was expecting (actually I had forgotten what I had ordered), but three skeins were packaged together and I really liked how the colors looked. 


I cast on for Color Affection, then started to have second thoughts.  There are a lot of Stephen West shawls I want to do, why not try one of those instead?  I looked for three color patterns and wasn’t thrilled.  The Color Affection kept calling me.  I knew the pattern – I didn’t have to figure out anything complicated.  It felt – comforting.  That’s what I need right now, not knitting that is challenging or difficult, but knitting that is comforting.  No pressure to get it done, just knit on it when you want for as little or as much as is pleasing.  Something that doesn’t take a lot of brain power.  Garter stitch.  That’s the ticket. 

I can’t seem to go back to the projects I was working on when he died.  They seem tainted to me.  I love knitting socks, but I just can’t bring myself to even think about socks – All I think of is the half-finished pair that was to be his Christmas gift and I start crying.

Knitting feels different now.  It doesn’t feel so obsessive.  I used to feel like a HAD to knit.  There were so many things I wanted to make, learn, try, finish…  I don’t feel that compulsion anymore.  I don’t think it means that I’m going to stop knitting altogether.  I still love to look at yarn and patterns – and even ordered a sweater’s quantity of yarn this weekend.  It just feels different to me.  Maybe this is my “time of knitting differently” or something.  Maybe this is knitting through grief.