Reality versus Me

I am constantly inspired by the many knitting blogs that I frequent. My favorites are the usual, more popular knit-bloggers, all of who are uber-productive in comparison to my ADD-knitting-self. Reading the blogs, seeing their finished items, and drooling over their stashes and "Yarn Pr0n" posts make me feel like I may not be living up to my own knitting potential. I feel silly saying that, but am fairly positive that only my fellow knitters will be reading this anyway, so I'm sure you will all understand. Sure, I knit a lot of stuff. I knit every day. I knit everywhere I go. The size of my current stash is surely proof of my knitterly intentions - enough yarn for 5 sweaters and 100+ pairs of socks. All for myself, no one ever said I was a generous knitter! Well, that's not exactly true - I love to knit for other people, but that's usually spur of the moment projects, not long-planned ideas that I buy for well in advance. 90% of my stash is for me, me, all me!

My problem is not the time or opportunity to knit - it's the fact that I seem to spend more time reading the knitting blogs, and boards on Ravelry. I read about knitting online rather than doing my own knitting!

However, as of right now I'm going to be working on changing that - I fell in love with Decimal from the Spring 09 Knitty when it went up, and immediately ordered yarn for it from KnitPicks (I chose River). I have a sock (the 2nd of a pair) that's about 10% finished, and a hat that's about 85% finished on the needles right now, and I want to finish at least the hat, if not both sock and hat, before I start on the sweater.

I'm also liking Reverie, a cute swirled beret in the new Knitty, which I'd like to make for myself out of some Socks That Rock that I have in stash (I'm thinking Watermelon Tourmaline, or maybe Sapphire).

Ok, enough of what I *want* to do, here's what I've been up to lately. This sweet little man is Darren, the youngest son of my dear friend Linda & her cute hubby Doug. He's kindly modeling the MDK baby kimono that I finally got seamed and out in the mail to him. He's about 8 weeks old in this pic, and is such a cutie! I started the sweater about 2 months before Linda's due date, to give you an idea of how badly ADD affects my knitting productivity.

I've thankfully managed to peacefully end my dishcloth rampage, having knitted more cloths thus far in 2009 than I knit in all of 2008. This might seem odd, seeing as I run a dishcloth KAL group on Ravelry, but just like with everything else, I run hot and cold on the cloths - sometimes I go nuts and knit many, and other times I can go for months without being interested in them at all.

At KnitNight this past week I finished the first of my Sahara socks, which I'm finding completely enchanting to knit. They're nothing special, just a basic top-down sock pattern that I've plugged a mini-feather and fan stitch into, but I'm grooving on them. The pictures cannot seem to do justice to the gorgeous colors in the Colinette Jitterbug yarn. Yeah, yeah, I know that Jbug runs "short" on yardage, but this is the 4th (I think?) pair of socks I've knit from it, and despite my size 10 feet, I've never run short on yarn, so don't worry. I don't like really long legs on my socks anyway, so it works out.

I'm "designing" a hat for my friend Autumn which I will hopefully have done by the end of the weekend. It's sock yarn, more feather-fan, and a cute picot hem. I might write up the pattern when it's done, assuming I can remember it all by then. I don't have any good pictures of it so far, but here's the yarn in all its yummy glory - it's Yummy y FibraNatura, in the Gypsy Rose color. I've tried to use this yarn *numerous* times before, and this hat is the first time it's worked out well. I have started 2 socks, a scarf, another hat, and now this one. So happy that it's finally working out, because it's nice yarn and great to work with.

I've gotten addicted to knitted baby stuff. I have 2 baby gifts that are "due" before summertime, both of which I have the yarn and patterns all chosen for, but I keep going back and seeing other adorable baby things online. I fave them for "later", in the hopes that I'll either someday have another one, or more likely, a knit-worthy friend will have a baby sometime, but they just seem like such nice fast projects to me. FAST is a relative term here, I'm thinking of fast as being about a week for me...we'll see about that once I get into the actual knitting though!

Ok, it's 4pm on a Saturday afternoon. My kids have just come indoors from a few hours running themselves ragged in the yard with their friends, and are chilling out downstairs playing on the Wii. I think it's time for me to go join them, put my feet up (did I neglect to mention my semi-sprained left ankle from a tumble down a hill in our yard last week?) and get some knitting time in. Happy weekend to all!