Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Yarn diet or yarn allowance, this is my question !

One of the possible resolutions for the New Year is to go on a yarn diet as my stash gained a lot of weight lately.

However I don't like the idea of a diet, yarn or not, it sounds like I'm going to miss out on something, suffer for self imposed reasons. I'll try to come up with a new strategy: the yarn allowance. This sounds much better, yes, now I don't have to exercise self discipline or restraint, I can still buy yarn, no restrictions to begin with, just a budget to follow :)!
The next step is to calculate my weekly/monthly yarn allowance.

Let's see: I go SnB every week, I do a yarn shop tour every month or maybe every second month.That means I need to use my yarn allowance for all of these, including the drinks and snacks at my SnB sessions, books and magazines, and some fleece and roving for spinning.

Is 50 a week too much or too little? Will I be able to afford the luxurious fiber I am dreaming about? I don't know yet but I'll start with this amount and try to keep my yarn hunger satisfied.

Friday, December 21, 2007

Cables and twisted stitches

I did finish the cable sweater - Kirsten Cowan's design from Vogue Winter 2005 - and I loved the picture of it on elann. Knitting cables is fun for me, and the cable yoke turned out pretty good but the twisted stitches were hard. Maybe it's because the way I knit. There must be a different way to twist them without having to fight the yarn or the needles.

The pattern is nice and now I'm trying to finish a matching cabled hat, however that won't happen too soon with all the other projects I have to finish before the end of this year.

The picture does not show it but it's warm and cozy. The more I wear it the more I like it. But if I were to make another one I'll knit it in the round and I'll knit some short rows to shape the back of the neck. Will I knit another one? Maybe. I don't know.

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

The discipline of blogging

A blog is only good if you keep blogging. I realized this when I noticed my last entry was quite a time ago. It turns out I do not blog often enough to keep up with my knitting life.
Here I have my New Year's resolution: to become a disciplined blogger and blog at least once a week. After all, I started the blog to document my knitting life and it looks like I'm knitting every day but blog just once in a blue moon.
My Christmas knitting was light this time, I did not plan too many projects and I could squeeze in a "Christmas garden".
The little Christmas trees looke fabulous on the mantle but the lightning was not good enough for a picture.
So here it is for me to enjoy:

Christmas Garden
and anohter view