Yarnification

Dropped by the library on the way to work this morning, and they had three crochet books for me. Two were ones I sent for through interlibrary loan a while back—Cozy Crochet again, since I wanted to have another look at that fabric basket pattern, and The Big Book of Scrap Crochet Projects, since I need some ideas for using up some of my yarn—and the third one was Donna Kooler’s Crocheted Afghans, which had just come in. The librarian, who is a very nice person, had set it aside in case I wanted to see it, which I very much did. There are some gorgeous afghans in there. I probably won’t make any right now, but I want to poke through the book and drool over the afghans.

I’m still waiting on 24-Hour Crochet Projects, but it looks like it’ll be a while on that one. I’ve had a hold on it for over a month now, but I just checked regional library catalog via telnet, and the only library in the system that has a copy only just got theirs. I’m third in line, so it’ll probably be another month or more. Crochet books definitely seem to be kept out longer than fiction. But there are four people after me, so it could be worse.

Today’s photo: I’m on round 13 of 17 here, I think, but I’m planning on adding more rounds at the end. No, I don’t really know what it’s for yet, but I’m happy with how it’s coming out. It’s definitely going to need blocked within an inch of its life though. It’s doing this sort of goofy 3-D thing with the pineapples being raised up and the other parts being lower down (though in the photo it almost looks the opposite, some kind of optical illusion thing going on there).

I guess it’s a good thing I was already planning on buying an extra box or two of pins for blocking the shawl when its finished, huh? (No progress pics of the shawl because it seems to have no plans to start looking like anything other than a bunchy mess until it’s blocked.)

Last night something astonishing happened. Don and I were in Columbus buying supplies for the store, and as it happened we needed to go to a bunch of craft stores. I was in a Michael’s, a Hobby Lobby, a Joann’s Etc, and two (or was it three?) Walmarts, and I bought no yarn whatsoever. None. I bought elasticized thread for the socks I’m making (I made the cuff on one sock about one or two rows wider than it really needed to be. It’s not big enough to be worth redoing but it’s a touch loose, so I’m going to run some of that thread around the top to snug it up a bit) and some stitch markers, and I ended up with a bunch of free pattern leaflets, but I didn’t buy yarn. I almost bought a set of double-pointed needles to try knitting socks but decided to put them back since I probably ought to practice a little more (okay, a lot more) on regular (and bigger) needles before I try that.

When Don saw that I wasn’t buying any yarn (and Hobby Lobby had practically half of their yarn on sale—a lot of the Lion Brand stuff was about half off, even), he asked me if I was feeling okay and checked my forehead. I don’t know, none of it was calling to me last night. I’ll probably be kicking myself later when I go to buy something that was on sale for really cheap last night, like after the last time I saw yarn at half off in Hobby Lobby. (It was Red Heart in some nifty variegated print, I think Woodsy, and it was marked down to something like $1.09 a skein. And I didn’t buy any and regretted it later.)

I dunno, I guess just couldn’t think of what things I’d been thinking of that I didn’t already have yarn for, and I usually hate to buy pricier yarn (and for me anything that costs more than $2.50 a skein is pricier) without a specific project in mind.

And I really should work on using up the yarn in my stash now that I’ve got that scrap projects book out of the library…