The Little Knittin' Kitten

How do you know it's love?

I've had a week from hell at work. Without going into details, it's been one of those weeks where my energy is entirely fuelled by mixture of stress and urgency. Friday was the worst, as is every Friday before a new student arrival date during the busiest time of the year: last-minute changes to student registrations, last-minute new student registrations, last-minute emergencies. So needless to say, I've been a bit irritable during those few hours when I'm home and trying desperately to relax on the couch with Nyron. But instead of getting upset at my irritability and saying things like, "don't take your stress out on me!" what does he do? He calls me up at the end of my office hours on Friday and says, "I've just cashed my $50 GST cheque. Why don't I take you over to Romni and buy you some yarn". He knows that Romni's July sale (20% off everything!) is ending this weekend and I haven't been able to take advantage of it at all because of my yarn diet. He also knows that gift yarn doesn't count as breaking the diet, so he dropped me off for the last half hour that Romni is open on Fridays with cart blanche to buy $50 worth of anything I wanted. See why I love this man?

I ended up buying 10 balls of Debbie Bliss Cotton DK in the Green Apple colourway. I don't usually like to buy yarn without a pattern in mind and Romni is especially overwhelming when one doesn't have an exact shopping list, but cotton DK of any variety is always useful and Debbie Bliss is a brand I've knit and enjoyed before so I'm happy with my purchase. It came to a little over the $50 limit, but who's counting?

Of course, the first thing I did this morning was add it to my Ravelry stash. Don't worry, I had every intention of telling you all; I got my Ravelry invite on Wednesday. This was perfect timing. Part of my stress of last week was caused by a terrible headache Tuesday night that made me to go home early Wednesday afternoon as I was still feeling pretty sick (the headache gave me a hangover like I haven't had since university!). Just before leaving work I checked my place in line and found that there were only 14 invites ahead of me. I willed my invite to be in my inbox by the time I got home and it was! That made me feel much better; I spent the afternoon starting to add things to my site, although it's still a work in progress, and joining a few groups.

So far, it's been the most helpful to me in getting inspiration for future projects. A lot of my stash is actually gift yarn which I received from a very generous knitter in England who heard my cries about the lack of decent yarn shops in the city. While I'm incredibly grateful to her, I have no idea what to do with most of what she gave me. Example: 20 balls of Jaeger merino DK weight in a lovely light gray that has been sitting in my stash for these 3 years without telling me what it wants to be. With Ravelry, I can add it to my stash and up pops a link to thumbnails of all the other projects that have or are being knit in that yarn. So I can browse through and see if there is anything that I particularly like and would want to knit. Unfortunately for this case, the projects that I liked the most were the aran knit sweaters from Aran Knitting by Alice Starmore, a book that costs over $300 on Amazon. So that yarn will have to sit a little longer. However, I have narrowed down what I'd like to do with my new cotton DK to two patterns: Green Gable or Rusted Root, both from Zephyr Style. I like Rusted Root the best and I think it would look great in this green colourway, but I'm not sure I'd want everyone to see the left cup of my bra through the shirt, and I don't tend to wear undershirts as a rule. I might like the pattern enough to cave in an buy one, though.

Until next we knit!

=^_^=

posted @ 10:16 a.m.