Saturday, February 9, 2008

Falling off the wagon

Today I made my first purchase this year of a new item that wasn't food or hygiene related. I bought yarn. I took a pledge (to myself and to a friend) not to buy any new yarn in 2008 even before we officially decided to do the Compact, so it feels doubly lousy. The circumstances are extenuating. I have three pairs of socks on the needles for which I am going to run out of each color before I finish the second sock, and in all three cases, the first sock is completely done, with ends woven in and everything, making creative color mixing to stretch the yarn I have an unappealing option. The socks were all started in September. I knew I needed the yarn since October, just never got around to buying it.

But I went a little further and got some other colors of yarn to use as accents for some fair isle sweaters I have planned. I have the base yarn for four different fair isle sweaters, but not enough accent yarn for even one of them as it stands now. I could just make solid sweaters, but I wanted them to be fair isle when I bought the base yarn, I just didn't buy the accent yarn at the time because I didn't have the color card. I tried to buy accent yarn at last year's Stitches Midwest, and I did get some, but they didn't have all of the colors I wanted.

I am usually so excited when buying yarn, but the (completely self-induced) guilt is ruining my usual high. I think the only cure is to go start one of the sweaters for which the accent yarn will soon be winging its way to me, but I want to finish at least one of the BSJs this weekend. Both of them have been sitting there for weeks now with their ends dangling, their shoulder seams unsewn and the buttons languishing in a coaster on the end table. I did finish my shrug finally, and it looks great. Photos to come post-blocking.

I am hoping this will be my only departure from my non-yarn-buying path this year. And I'm saying this with a trip to Scotland planned in the coming months. Home of many sheep and much delicious yarn. If I feel this cruddy getting stuff I need to finish using stuff that's already in my stash, how am I going to feel if I just haul off and buy completely new stuff? I can't even think about it.

4 comments:

  1. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and let go of the guilt. It seems self defeating to deny yourself anything you need to finish a project. I may be a bit biased, as I love yarn, too! The more the merrier!!

    Keep knitting!
    Stella

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  2. Darcy, just modify your pledge! Don't buy any frivolous yarn. Only buy yarn when you have a specific project planned for it.

    First, you make clothes out of it. Seems essential.

    Second, your soul needs to knit, so it's food. Still essential.

    Can't you donate some of those unused rolls to a knitting class or something? ;-)

    Steve

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  3. Thanks, Stella and Steve. The Professor and I did discuss it and decided it was silly to wait until 2009 to purchase the yarn to finish the socks and sweaters if I knew that's what I'd be doing. It just feels like a slippery slope.

    Steve, I've got over 60 *miles* of yarn to knit, but none of it feels like I don't love it enough that I'm willing to give it away. But there are enough specific projects' worth in there that I should be good for the rest of '08.

    At least now I can look forward to the mail again for a little while!

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  4. Darcy: have you made a list on Ravelry for your queued projects? I'm just in the process of doing that in the hopes that should I want to buy more yarn (I've got a little acquisition issue myself as you might well have gathered) I can just check out the list and remind myself of my plans. I can't bring myself to put the entire stash on Ravelry... just not that much into it.

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