Not One Stitch

That's right, not one stitch was knit by me yesterday.  Not one.  I did, however, play with my yarn.  I'm in the midst of the monumental task of cataloguing all of my stash and entering it into Ravelry.  And yes, it is a monumental task.  I have finished the bookshelf with the DK, worsted weight and chunky weights, as well as the half-bookshelf with the sock yarns.

Half-bookshelf with Sock Yarn

Bookshelf with Anything Heavier than Sock Yarn

They've all been photographed, organized, entered into Ravelry and repackaged into Ziploc bags.  I'm terrified of a moth infestation after reading about some people's woes on a sock knitting board, so I figured I'd do what I could to keep that nonsense at bay.  For the most part, they've been organized by colourway.

I only have three (small) shelves to go.

I learned today that Ravelry has an awesome feature - you can download your entered stash as an Excel file! Let me tell you - what a great way to inventory for insurance purposes!  I've printed it out and am going to keep an up-to-date copy with my important household papers.  I'm very happy about this feature.

I'm off on vacation as of tomorrow night, and I've already packed my knitting projects - way too many, I'm sure, but I certainly don't want to run the risk of running out of yarn while I'm away!  I'm taking my mother's socks, my first ever toe up pair (I'm halfway through the second sock and got sidetracked by learning two at a time), My Vampire Boyfriend (these are haunting me - I just want to get them done!), and my Plain Vanilla 2.2.  If that doesn't keep me busy enough, I've brought along another ball of self-striping yarn just in case.

And oh!  Exciting News!!  The best part is that I've been able to secure a spot on Tempted's Burlesque Sock Club!!  Oh yay!  An early birthday present to me! <insert happy dance here> I am terribly excited about this, especially since I've been watching the Knit Girllls' podcasts while I've been working on the organization project and hearing about how wonderful these yarns and Stacy are.   I know, I know, it's only two days after writing about needing to go on a yarn diet, but it really isn't July yet!

It's All About Me

Heh.  That's a good one.  I am one of those people who rarely puts myself first.  But, I figured, dear reader, that I should let you know a bit about me.  I started knitting when I was 4.  My Beppe, or grandmother, taught me when I was staying at her house for a few days.  She was one of those women who was always busy.  She always had some type of crafting project on the go, whether it be knitting or crocheting or something else.  My first knitting projects were amazingly good.  I would go to bed at night at Beppe's house with an item that was full of holes, extra increases, unintentional decreases, and twisted and dropped stitches, and when I woke up in the morning, it had repaired itself overnight!  As I grew, I later realized that my Beppe couldn't stand a project with mistakes in it, and would rip it back and reknit it while I slept.  Kind of like the Knitting Tooth Fairy.  Too bad I don't have one of those now!

I knit off and on during my youth, making the odd sweater or two whenever I felt like it.  I remember that once I had chosen a project that was rather complicated, a summer sweater out of a very soft pink and white twist cotton/acrylic blend that had cables that went diagonally across the front, with some sort of patterned stitch (seed stitch?) in between the cables.  I gave up after a while, not because it was too complicated, but because life just got too busy (and knitting teenagers are not really that cool).  I gave it to a favourite aunt who also knit (my Beppe's daughter), and she very graciously finished it for me.  I wore that sweater a lot!

When I first got married, I knit my then-husband a sweater one year for Christmas.  It was a chunky weight wool/acrylic blend, in grey and black with a Fair Isle pattern across the front.  I was so proud of that sweater, working on it in secret.  To my dismay, it didn't fit over his head - the neckline was too tight!  A knitting friend of my mother's helped me rip it back and restitch it, saving the sweater.

Since then, I've finished lots of projects (even those that fit!) , but I've learned that I cannot really knit with deadlines.  I just puts too much pressure on myself otherwise. Knitting is a stress-reliever for me, and I don't want or need it to be creating stress!  I am not really a process knitter, more of a finished object knitter, but I'm learning to relax and enjoy the process, and not finish a project just to finish the project.  I'm finding more and more that knitting is very much like meditation.  But I'm preaching to the converted here, aren't I?

Not much knitting happened yesterday, but I did get a few rows in on my Plain Vanilla 2.0 socks.  I was hoping to add a picture of them here, but for whatever reason Blogger isn't letting me this morning.  Will try again later.

And two of the reasons why I have such an enchanted life:

My daughters, walking the beach at Port Stanley last Friday

Brand New Blog

Because I don't have enough things to do with my spare time, I've decided to join the millions of others and start a blog.  My primary aim for this blog is to focus on knitting.  My idea is to post about my dreams of knitting, including my works in progress (WIPs),  my finished objects (FOs), my current ever-growing stash, and of course, my stash enhancement activities.  That is my idea, but I can't promise I'll stay on task. This is called The Enchanted Daydreamer, after all. I may occasionally veer off task into the realm of gardening, cooking, sewing, puppies, and the like.  Will my blog be different than the zillions out there? Who knows.  Will anyone read my blog?  Again, who knows.

I will start this blog by publicly publishing that I am hoping to avoid stash enhancement activities from July 2011 to December 2011.  I have things that I'd like to do outside of my knitting world *gasp - I know!*  I have been spending every spare cent on my knitting life these last few months, and my stash has become rather, ahem, large.  Of course, that hasn't happened in just in the past few months, mind you.  While photographing and organizing my stash for Ravelry (and moth protection), I have realized that it has reached SABLE proportions (for those of you unfamiliar with SABLE, it means Stash Acquired Beyond Life Expectancy), and I need do whatever I can in order to knit it down in the next few months.  I'm hoping that by swearing to myself that I will HAVE to post any stash enhancement activities, I will keep true to my goal.  I will await public flogging, but I know you knitters out there are a friendly sort, and will at the very least ohh and ahh over my acquisitions.  In the very least, I'm hoping that I will think twice before filling up my cart with all sorts of lovely yarn and charging it to my well used credit card.

Recent Stash Enhancements include these lovelies from See Jayne Knits http://www.etsy.com/shop/seejayneknityarns, which I don't actually have in my hot little hands yet, but once this darned Canada Post strike is done, I will see these sock yarns in my mailbox:

NCIS Abby

NCIS Ducky

Blue Jeans and Barnwood

Monarch Butterfly

NCIS McGee

Canadian Maple

Fishy Wishy in a Dishy

These lovelies will keep me busy for the next little while, that's for certain. I just couldn't resist these colourways, which are unlike any I've got in my stash. And I know this because I've just gone through all of the sock yarn in my stash.

I have a few knitting goals for the month of July 2011:

1. Finish Mother's Day Socks for Mom - these are in progress, and well on the way to being completed
2. Finish Vampire Boyfriend Socks again, these are in progress, but have been hibernating forever.  I want to finish these
3. Finish Plain Vanilla Socks, version 2 yes, another pair in progress.  These are my purse knitting socks.  Because if I tell you that, it justifies me having three pairs of socks on the go at once.
4. Finish cable ribbing portion of Melissa's Ski Sweater
5. Pick a shawl pattern, and start it!
6. Start a pair of socks in one of the See Jayne Knits Yarns, if Canada Post ever gets back to work.

Lofty goals, but I do have a week of vacation coming up, and could probably pick off Goal 1, 2 and 3 during that time.

Bear with me, my knitting friends.  I have a lot to learn about blogging.  I have not done this before, and there will be a learning curve, I'm sure.  Hopefully I can figure out how to post a few pictures to share in the next post. Oh yeah, check this out - I'm already getting better at this!!