I wanted to mention that I have started a “yarn diet.” I am not the dieting type in general, but a confluence of personal circumstances has made we want to slow down and smell the roses (or fondle the merino—to each her own).

So, I am not buying yarn right now. More power to people who are, this certainly isn’t a contest to see who can be the least materialistic or whatever. I sort of miss it, but a lot of it simply was retail therapy. But I kept finding new things I wanted to make, and all the old things that were waiting their turns kept being shoved down the line.

I have a few larger projects that I’d like to get done, and after that (optimism), I’ll have a bit more freedom to work on what I feel like--from stash yarn. Some people blog about new yarn purchases, but that didn’t seem like an interesting writing topic to me. Which is probably too bad, since if I wrote about every yarn purchase, I’d blog a lot more.

The stash is pretty healthy. That is to say, robust. It is mostly good stuff for which I have plans, but there are some “problem areas”, I guess. I have a lot of sock yarn, and a lot of lace weight yarn. It’s so easy to buy a skein or two, some tempting colorway steals your heart, and you know you could make something lovely with it. Repeat until you run out of storage….

The sock yarn gets some use, but is probably the area I have felt the least restraint when it comes to buying yarn, so what I bought greatly outpaced my sock production. Lord knows there’s no shortage of sock yarn available, and I have a good selection from which to work.

Lace yarn is tricky. It looks so sweet, so innocent. I have some skeins that are over 1500 yards. One false move, bang, your stash has exploded. I only bought 5 skeins of yarn at Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival, but that was 4360 yards of lace-weight and 606 yards of fingering weight. I don’t regret it, but nearly 5000 yards is a whole lot of knitting. To that end, I plan to also knit 2 shawls during this “diet.” I've even started one, from Gathering of Lace.

Shetland Tea Shawl

Pattern by Dale Long

Yarn: Fine Fibers Silk-Camel Lace

Needles: Size 3 double points and circular

I am really enjoying the circular construction now that I am past the point which was worked on double pointed needles. You start with only 8 or so stitches and do a number of increases to expand the circle. There are 3 stitch patterns within the shawl besides the plain knitting sections, and I'm only on the first one. The rows are still relatively short in this section, so I hope to get through them quickly.

All the diet details after the break...

The Diet details:

No yarn purchases from 10/14/09 to 5/12/10.

Finish:

• Mossbank Pullover
• Kureyon Log Cabin Blanket
• Tangled Yoke Cardigan
• Shetland Tea Shawl
• One other lace shawl TBD

I am saving (in my piggy bank, thank you very much) $5.00 a week for a reward at the end of the allotted period. I am currently planning to make the February Fitted Pullover out of Dream in Color Classy in either Blue Lagoon or Bermuda Teal.

These sorts of projects can't involve too much planning. I have my goals for the month of November:

• No yarn purchases. Try to avoid buying needles or books unless truly necessary
• Finish Entrelac Scarf
• Complete the Horseshoe Pattern section of the Shetland Tea Shawl (this is probably the most difficult goal)
• Knit 5 squares of the Kureyon Log Cabin Blanket for a total of 15 complete squares
• Get to the armhole shaping of the Mossbank Pullover

I am 3 weeks into the diet, and I have stuck to it very well. I went through my stash last night and filled up a grocery bag full of yarn. It's mostly older yarn that I am no longer interested in knitting. When I didn't know better, I thought Lamb's Pride Worsted would be a good yarn for a sweater, and I actually knit a sweater from it. After frogging it, I thought maybe it would be good for felting. I was always lukewarm about felted items--they often look so pathetic, but maybe it would work for me. I tried a pair of felted clogs, but that was also a disaster. Another larger purchase was a few small cones and one large cone of fingering weight cotton yarn. I was going to make a chemise and a camisole out of that, but I really no longer feel any desire to do that. I realized I don't like knitting cotton very much! There's also a variety of bits of leftovers from projects, of course. So I feel the time has come for me to let it all go. Some school or senior center will get a nice bag of yarn soon.