Knitting Tales: Where was I?

I just realized that it's a good thing I can't afford to buy enough yarn (or at least the sorts of yarn that I lust after) for either a sweater-sized project or the number of smaller projects that I covet upon sight of the patterns; not only would we be completely buried in the stuff, but I'd never get anything off the needles. I'd just sit blissfully and inertly in the middle of a vast fleecy wasteland periodically punctuated by bare-foot-seeking subterranian Addi Turbo's, using the excuse of being afraid of moving for fear of perforating myself in order to just loll there all day contemplating my stash of Eye Candy.

As it is, I am using the excuse of Yuletide present-generation to indulge myself in a orgy (for me) of Knitting Stuff:

~ In spite of the tangle of circulars I have stashed willy-nilly in a Zip-Lock bag, I seem to be in constant need of a new needle, especially as I have taken to knitting socks and other small-circumference items on two circulars instead of on dpn's.

~ I have recently finished everything but the sewing of the straps on my sister's tote, and am considering the unlikely wisdom of knitting a couple matching felted pockets for the inside out of the leftover scrap yarn.

~ OTN I have knitted both cuffs for the unwisely self-designed mittens intended for the Fabulous Susan, and am fretting about the likelihood of my having to purchase another expensive (and unmatched to currently used) ball of Kidsilk Haze in order to finish the project. I have also discovered that I purchased the wrong sized needle for the guage I preferred for the body of the mittens, so I must go back and exchange/buy another needle.

~ OTN I have the cast-on stitches for the first of several cousin-bound and vaguely X-Mas colored felted Oven Mitts made from recently purchased Cascade Quattro (I couldn't bear the thought of dipping into my ages-old stash of the luscious Manos del Uruguay, knowing the likelihood that the product would likely get singed and/or dotted with foodstuffs). Again, I have discovered a lack of the requisite number of correctly-sized needles, and must hie me to the LYS to purchase another set.

~ OTN (barely escaping the sobriquet of UFO) is 3/4 of the cabled sweater I am theoretically working on *extremely* gradually for the Pirate. It is too heavy and much too scratchy (I think the remaining lanolin has long since crystalized) to work on in the warm weather, and with all the more urgently-scheduled X-mas and birthday prezzies in the works, it keeps getting shoved to the back of the line. By now I have lost the pattern and forgotten how I was adjusting it for the different guage and size of hubby, so it may keep being shoved back indefinitely, in spite of the Pirate's rapidly escalating Hinting Rate.

~ Lurking in The Basket are several variously-stuffed bags of Koigu PPPM, which I have stashed away at one or two skeins per purchase - some of which are earmarked for scarves for auntie and uncle (to be mixed with matching Kidsilk Haze) for supposedly *last year's Xmas prezzie*. Unfortunately, in spite of many hours of experimentation and frogging I've yet to figure out a suitable stitch. I hope I can finish the scarves before the beloved and incredibly patient recipients reach centenarian status.

~ Also in the basket are two skeins of Schaeffer's Laurel in the gorgeous Billie Holiday colorway, originally intended for an auntie-bound Clapotis similar to the one knitted for Dances With Vampire in Emily Dickenson. To my great dismay, I now question the yarn's suitability for the project. I have ground to a halt, lacking the third and perhaps fourth skein necessary to turn the luscious stuff into a sweater for my own self and lacking the imagination necessary to figure out what other project would be right for the luscious stuff. It's not really suitable for a scarf or hat or socks, and I just can't bring myself to make a bag out of it. It may be wisest to leave it in skein form and simply drape it artistically across The Basket as a sort of decorative furnishing, but I'm not practical enough to be able to do that; I would feel it taunting me, and use that as an excuse to beat myself up about my own lack of vision, lack of frugality, lack of ambition, and lack of sense. Alas and Alack!

That's the OTN stuff. I have a huge cardboard moving-box of UFO's interred in the largely-unusable bedroom closet. This wildly tumbled mass includes most of that stash of Manos del Uruguay (which could be more usefully deployed as Decorative Furnishing per above description), along with the abandoned but gorgeous self-designed Fair Isle cardie that I partially knit up of the stuff twenty years ago and then abandoned when I ran out of a key colorway. Sadly I have also lost the book of charted Fair Isle designs/patterns that I was using at the time, a beautiful and useful collection - possibly the OOP Starmore charted pattern book I see advertised for way-too-many hundreds of dollars online? I can't find any similar book nowadays. In any case, all of this horded treasure has probably been rendered unusable by a combination of mice and moths and possible leakage from the bathtub pipes that lurk behind the adjacent wall. Sacrilage, I know. Remember the List of Lacks?

So (relative) poverty and the vast distance in time between my first stint of knitting and my second have ruined some beautiful yarn and projects, but have rescued me from the likely results of my own acquisitive instincts, which are frankly those of a yarn-crazed packrat. If we ever manage to improve our monetary status, the Pirate had better resign himself to the necessity of moving to a house with more storage space...