I am obsessed with yarn. I admit it. I have a SABLE in my home. (SABLE= Stash Acquisition Beyond Life Expectancy, term courtesy of the Elann chatsite). I truly don't need to buy another skein of anything, and would still be able to knit non-stop til I die (and I'm planning on living a great many more years). It should distress me, but it doesn't. It's a sort of therapy for me, living surrounded by yarn. It's tactile, it's colorful, it's dream-inspiring. What more could I ask for?
Well, I guess I could ask that it inspire me to actually knit some of it up into one of the other huge collections I have ~ knitting patterns. Or even my own pattern, since I do make them up from time to time. I'm currently trying to create a record of the patterns I do own, to organize that *stash*, but it's slow going. I open a magazine, to find the patterns I bought it for, but find that I have to browse the whole thing, reread the articles, look at each pattern again, reconsider some of them, etc. And then I start to think about the yarns I already have ~ at least the ones I can remember unaided ~ and start calculating about whether I have enough of said stash yarn to make one of them, or how I can tweak said pattern to my needs. And before you know it, hours have flown past, and I've recorded maybe one or two patterns. Out of the thousands I have. I'm thinking this is going to take a long, long time.
My stash is made up primarily of natural yarns ~ wool, silk, alpaca, cashmere blends, bamboo. I love knitting those. Sort of impractical, since I live in Southern California, where (except for the last week) the temperatures tend to be a bit on the warm side. But I get cold easily, and my work environment is airconditioned (too airconditioned, but then, I have no control over that), so I can wear my natural fibers, as long as I don't go for something really heavy. So of course, I absolutely love heavily cabled sweaters. Judging by my knitting desires, I really should live somewhere that has actual seasons, including cold ones.
I said in an earlier post that I don't knit for my family, and that's not quite true. I have knit for them before, using washable yarns. My youngest brother is a clothing snob, but I seem to be able to meet his style sense. He's also 6'4, so I'm not inspired to knit much for him given how big a project that is. Both my sister and youngest brother have provided me with nieces and nephews, and I have made several things for them. The girls were especially fun to knit for, because they're both girly-girls, and love brightly colored, frilly, fancy things However, their parents are, as I said, wash & wear types, so I have to abandon my natural fibers and knit in machine washable yarns. Some of them are fun knits, and the kids have loved having Aunt Christine make them something.
I work a lot. Teaching is so not a "9 to 5" kind of job, although I don't think many people realize that. In addition to lesson plans, grading papers, parent conferences, report cards, etc., I do a huge amount of fundraising. The other 5th grade teacher and I take our students (as many as we can get to go) to Washington, DC, Williamsburg, Jamestown, and Yorktown, every year. Coming from SoCal, it's a tad expensive, so we find ourselves fundraising like mad to help the students go. I don't have nearly enough knitting time, and even when I do find myself with spare time, oftentimes I'm too tired to knit. So I have become a selfish knitter, knitting for myself only, with rare exceptions.
One exception to this selfishness ~ I do teach my students to knit. Well, as many as want to learn, anyway. One year I did do it as a whole class, and we even made our own knitting needles (dowels, sharpened in the pencil sharpener, then sanded smooth, with beads attached to one end. I can't remember what size dowels I used, but they became size 10 needles, more or less.) And I've loved the fact that, many years, it's my boys who seem the most interested, and the best learners. And my learning-disabled kids do just as well, if not better, than my other students. I love that.
Well, it seems I've rambled on for quite a bit. This blogging can be a bit addictive! I'm off to work on grading papers, with, hopefully, a little knitting time after that. I'm working on a simple little cropped jacket, a quick knit, and I'd like to finish it soon.
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