Of Course I Can Eat the Whole Piece....

You've heard of the little girl with eyes bigger than her stomach? It should have served as some sort of warning that I was always that girl. Two cookies? Why not half a dozen? Two kinds of pie? Why not try a piece of each? Yes, I was a chubby teenager and yes, I've definitely had to learn to curb that behavior if I didn't want to acquire my own area code, along with arteries the consistency of petrified wood. The bad news, is that the tendency hasn't gone away so much...it's just been channeled.

Turns out that now I have eyes significantly larger than my knitting bag. All my knitting bags. All my knitting bags, my craft room, and the secret storage place where unloved yarn goes to die (I used to buy a significant amount of cheap and nasty acrylic before I knew better....my mother crocheted with it, saying all the while that "yarn's yarn--why pay good money for wool and who's going to know anyway?" She said the same thing about margarine vs. butter, so that should have made me suspicious). In fact, I have eyes the size of small planetoids, as evidenced by today's incident.

Let me back up. I am currently working on the last two miner's blankets. However, this is not a portable project by any means. It is heavy and comprised of many pieces that have to be kept in order and so it gets worked on at home, primarily on the weekends (there's also the fact that I'm crocheting them together and crocheting the borders and I'd rather be nibbled to death by ducks than crochet most of the time--so an occasional knitting break is definitely in order). At Knit for Life, I've been working on the birthday sweater (finished a sleeve the other night....then realized it was too short, in spite of being a half an inch longer than the pattern required. Who was this pattern written for, a human T-Rex?) so I had to unpick the cast off edge and put it back on the needles where it's now having a time out until I'm not mad at it anymore. On the exercise bike and during my lunch hours, I've been working on a pair of little arrowhead lace socks made of the beautiful aqua and white yarn sent to me by Celtic Jo (Thank you again, Jo!!). I also have a partial shawl in teal alpaca that must be unpicked because even I can't make a solid argument for the possibility of my returning to it after a year (also, I made it in fingering weight because I was afraid of laceweight and I'm just not feeling the love), and a partial sweater in Atacama Alpaca that must also be unpicked because I was never thrilled with the pattern I picked for it and now I've found THE pattern for it (always wait for the yarn to tell you, Grasshopper. Unless you like unravelling delicate yarn until you want to bash your head against the wall.) This is plenty, right? Well.....

For whatever reason (full moon? temporary or not-so-temporary insanity? I need my head examined?) I was looking back at the Lizard Ridge blanket/afghan on Knitty. I love that thing. I do not love the price tag associated with 22 balls of Kureyon, but I love the blanket. I started thinking about how I could maybe buy a couple of balls every pay period and then make a couple of squares every pay period and just see how it would all come together (no, I wasn't drinking....I just wish I had that kind of good excuse. And yes, I WOULD like a third piece of cake...do you have any ice cream to go with it?) Then I started looking more closely and realized that 1) it is made with a devilish amount of short rows which I know how to do but feel much the same about them as I do about crocheting--refer to duck nibbling, 2) it apparently knits up bubbly and must be blocked well if it's to lay remotely flat (I don't want it to stray into egg crate land when it's lying strategically across my couch, inviting admiration and cat hair) and 3) it would require an assload of crocheting squares together--possibly two asses worth. Never mind, said I, feeling all virtuous for not taking on another project.

Ha.

Then today, when I found myself with a lunch break and nothing to do, I wandered over to Ben Franklin (I should get hazard pay for working within walking distance of a store with an impressive yarn department). And I found first these:

and then this:

The yarn is Boku by Plymouth, 95% wool and 5% silk, 99 yards for $6.99 at Ben Franklin. The pattern (which didn't photograph well) is a mitered square blanket with absolutely no fiddly short rows. It does not become bubbly, and each square is made by picking up stitches on the edge of the last one...so no joining the squares. I'm in heaven. I snapped up the pattern and two balls of yarn without the thought even wasting time with my brain or my restraint centers (yeah, like I have those). See, the blanket in the picture is made with just one color of yarn...but Boku is rather like noro in that it comes in a ton of beautiful colorways. And I figure I can make each square in a different yarn, which means I can buy it gradually--a couple of skeins each pay period and....well, there you are. This is not what falling off the wagon looks like. This is what falling off the wagon into a mudpuddle and then having the wagon back over you looks like. But won't it be PRETTY? And hey, now Miss will have her OWN blanket. Rationalization, thy name is Knitingale.

Speaking of yarn, Tonia asked about the green sock yarn. It is 450 yards of superwash merino from Pagewood Farm, hand dyed especially for Main Street yarn in Mill Creek, Washington. It is also terribly seductive. Don't look directly at it, Tonia. You may never get back out.