New Year's resolutions

My New Year's goal, like millions of other people's is to lose weight. Yarn weight that is. After 3 years of knitting under my belt I've come to the realization that justifying a 50% off sale because I can never have enough good basic wool in a sensible color is a complete untruth. I can have too much, and I do. I don't have enough room left in my stash to squeeze in even one skein of something non-basic and non-functional i.e. what I'd actually enjoy knitting up. I know a lot of knitters, including me, are happily existing in a kind of imaginary 2nd life where we can actually complete in all the projects dream about, meanwhile merrily making the necessary purchases like we have all the time in the world. Unfortunately, perhaps because of latent feelings of unworthiness, I have not allowed myself a frivolous fantasy life. Choosing instead to labor under a delusion that I'm eeking out an existence on a windswept Scottish island and need to cloth a family of twelve with sock yarn described but with a single positive attribute: the phrase "wears like iron". The idea of organizing the stash and assigning projects to it so I can check them off like a giant to-do list sort of appeals to my masochistic nose-to-the-grindstone, no-dessert-before-dinner approach to tasks. This is, however, a new year. It's time to loosen up a bit. Actually to be honest I gave up the idea of organizing the stash in Ravelry because I stupidly gave my mother-in-law my Flickr account info and I'm too embarressed to continue taking pictures of it. Perhaps if I renamed the folder "pictures of other peoples yarn" that would fool her?

Tame That Stash

Back to the stash again- anyway, after much soul searching I have come to the realization that it's not the amount of yardage that's bothering me it's the amount of room it's taking up. Light bulb moment: to get rid of volume stop reaching for the fingering weight for a while (except socks of course) and go for the bulkiest stuff first! Duh! I don't remember the last time I cast-on with anything heaver than DK weight. But here is the worst offender in the you’re taking too much of my limited stash space please take up space elsewhere (maybe the closet) category:

9 hanks of Carodan Farm Worsted Weight in the Blackberry colorway. I don't usually like purple but this color is an exception, warm, varied with flecks of deep cherry, burgandy and a lighter heatherd gray that will mask any cat hair that makes it's way in. Rustic factor maybe a bit too high though, even for me. Smells pretty ripe, fairly full of chaf, and extremly scratchy. I cast on for a gauge swatch in hopes of doing the Central Park Hoodie with it last night and this morning awoke with what only can be described as rug burn on the tips of my left pinky and index finger. Not an encouraging sign. Seems to have softened up a bit in the wash. I'll try to reserve judgement until after the swatch has dried.