Stash

 

Exhibit A:  the tapestry bag. 

It's even prettier in person.

            This was one of my favourite things, back in the days when we went up to London a lot.  And the three years (ten weekends per) I was in homeopathy college, also in London, it was my weekend bag.  I loved it.  And then I started staying home all the time.  So when, a week or so ago, I started thinking thoughts about yarn stash, I thought of my tapestry bag.  Everything fits into it.  Even the hellhound blanket work bag fits into it. 

The Mobile Knitting Unit is in there too, it's just hiding.

But I know madness when I feel it coursing through my veins, so I also knew that this happy, contained situation would not last.

            And so today I give you . . . augmented stash.*

Yes, the book at the bottom says 'Knit Your Own Dog.' And one of the stripeys on the right is missing, but it had BETTER be back at the cottage. And the colours, as usual, are kind of off. The tweedy far-left five are a deep rosy . . . pink.

            You know what the worst thing is?  I have three more knitting books coming in the post.**  They should have been here by today.  They should have been here by the end of last week.  They were supposed to be here for Fiona to look at, blanch, and tell me I've lost my mind.  But they weren't.  Which meant I had no defense when we went to the yarn shop.  We had to go to the yarn shop!  The hellhound blanket is going to take way more yarn than what I've bought so far!***   And then. . . .

            And then. . . .

            Believe it or not I have plans for all of it.  And . . . believe it or not . . . individually quite reasonable plans.  The problem is the four hundred and sixty five simultaneous projects aspect. 

            Oh . . . well . . . almost all of it.†  That centre-left heap—there are eleven of the little suckers—that yarn has wept at me and clung to my All-Stars and my jeans hems each of the four times I've been in the frelling yarn shop.  I don't know what you call the effect, but it's variously dyed so as you knit it up you get an irregular fade from one colour to the next.  (It's not that self-striping yarn.  It's haphazard.)  They've got several colourways but this is the one I MUST HAVE.  So I'm cruising the shop and I keep cycling past it like an electron round its nucleus.  The horrible woman who runs the shop keeps knitting stuff and hanging it around, and because she is clearly telepathic and knew that my credit card and I would be arriving soon she had knitted up something from this particular yarn and it's like AAAAAUGH.  Except what she's done is this insane wave/scallop/lace pattern and kill me, just kill me.††  So I stared at it in wildest despair and then said to Fiona, do they have any patterns for REALLY SIMPLE tops?  Because it's clearly a Top Yarn.  Which is how we found ourselves on our knees by the book racks.  Which is how that happened.††† 

            Okay, new passion, new pet peeves.  Here's what may be my first knitting peeve:  books that start out helpfully with Descriptive Lists of Gradations of Skill.  Beginner patterns, they say, will be marked with one star.  Intermediate with two and three stars, and advanced with four and five stars.  And then there aren't any that are one or two stars. 

            We never did find a Really Simple Top.‡  So we consulted the horrible lady.  Who acknowledged that it was a problem, pulled out an almost simple top pattern from a large notebook full of single patterns, and started telling me how to adapt the damn thing to be more simple.  On the one hand I wanted to laugh, because the point here is that I haven't got a clue, and Fiona was going home in a couple of hours.  On the other hand . . . I was following what she was saying, although whether or not I'd be able to remember what the blasted heath to do once I got home again was moot.

            At this moment a tall elegant lady drifted up from nowhere and said in a subdued but unmistakable American accent if she could be so rude as to ask what we were talking about because she was always deeply interested in knitting.  So we told her.  And one thing led to another and she and I exchanged email addresses‡‡ and I . . . ::blush:: . . . I gave her the address of this blog as well and said that my attempts to learn to knit were featuring somewhat prominently lately.  Ahem.  But the point here is that the eleven-skein pile in the left-centre is her fault.  She said, even if you can't figure out precisely what you're making now, if you love the yarn, estimate what you'd need to make something like what you think you want to make and buy it, because by the time you find the pattern it will be gone and you will be forever bereft. 

            So I bought it.‡‡‡  And this other stuff.  And then, as if the day wasn't surreal enough already, § as Fiona and I were staggering back to the car park bowed under the weight of our new stash, a dreadfully familiar figure emerged from a grievously familiar door . . . it was Dentist from R'lyeh.  Who chatted.  Gods§§ help us.  We all walked back to the car park together in a jolly companionable fashion.  I said to Fiona that if I were a dentist I would not want to be seen in the company of someone with teeth that looked like mine, but then I suppose every time he looks at me smile he thinks, another year at Oxford for Hagar!  Yessssssss! 

* * *

* And because I wouldn't want you to think that I'm the only person with a problem, here is Fiona's supplementary stash. 

One of the teal skeins leaped out of the bag and rolled under my table. I was tempted. . . .

Yes, she's another sock knitter.  Eat your heart out, Black Bear. 

** Or four.  I forget.

*** And which honest, genuine purchase doesn't even appear in the photo.

† And I'm not going to tell you all my awesome plans at this point, the better to dazzle you with a fantastic array of whatsit later on.

†† I can now purl.  I deny however that I can now do anything.

††† Yes I know about Ravelry.  I belong, remember?  Books are still very satisfying. 

‡ I will give you a guided tour of my growing stash of knitting books some other night.

‡‡ She works at a yarn shop back home, sells her own designs, is setting up her own web site.  However I'm not going to expose her as someone who chats up random clueless strangers in Hampshire yarn shops yet.  I will acknowledge that we bonded over the fact that we both have gorilla-length arms.  She, however, is tall enough to bring this off.  Me . . . walking on your knuckles wears your gloves out something sorrowful.

‡‡‡ It's cotton and bamboo and amazingly silky.  Dunno what it's going to be like to knit with, but I'll be EXPERIENCED by then and I'm sure it will be FINE.

§ Have I been knitting a month yet?^

^ Let's say for the sake of argument I have.  And at ten squares a month it's still going to take eight months to finish the hellhound blanket.  And that's before I started trying to add in one or twelve other little projects.

§§ Elder Gods, of course