Back on Track.

Alright, inspiration whacked me over the head last night (insommnia's a great thing). I've just been working on "make-busy" projects for the last little while to keep my hands busy. The crochet strip there is destined to be yet another of the ubiquitous ripple blankets infecting the blogosphere. It's been a fun project with which to refresh my crochet skills, but man does the kitchen cotton split. I can't work on this while Mr. Munchkin's awake, as I curse while working on this thing. A lot. In several languages. And with great vehemence and the occasional rabid foam-flecked spittle.


I confess, I'd forgotten how fast crochet goes...and how big it gets when you're not watching. The blanket was originally supposed to be just a throw for the couch, but it is apparently large enough that it fits a king size mattress. Whoops.


And here we have 1 and 1/4 of a pair of Monkey socks for me. It's like all of my handknit socks decided to commit seppuku simultaneously. I'm down to these and one pair of pink socks. Not sufficient for a Nova Scotian winter, sez I. So, I'm going to be knitting socks like mad. And not just for me...the inspiration that I was talking about earlier took the form of what I should be knitting = Christmas socks for all! (Well...immediate family. I'm not completely insane yet.)

I can totally do this. In total, I need to knit one pair of silk socks (wool allergies), five pairs of men's socks (hooray for self-striping yarn and boring patterns), one pair of munchkin sized socks and two pairs of femme lace socks. That's only 8 grown-up pairs and 1 kid sized pair... given that there's 19 weeks left until Christmas, I figure that I'll have to knit a pair every two weeks or so and that's plenty of time, eh? Of course, complicating things is that fact that I'd like to spin the wool for some of the socks, but we'll see how that goes.

The other fringe benefit of this decision is that I'll be working the stash...no new wool allowed into the house until a sizeable chunk has disapparated. And speaking of stash reduction - once Fall term starts, Mr. Ninja will be teaching on Tuesday nights. (*insert wailing here*) So I'll not be showing up at KOL until possibly after Christmas. So, with that in mind, I think that I'd like to organize a stash swap/giveaway for the KOLers sometime soon.

So, here is what I've got so far - on a designated KOL night, everyone brings stash and/or UFOs that they'd like to trade. Two stipulations though - 1) you have to bring one *nice* tradeable item (yarn preferable, I'd say). This would help to avoid the problem that the Loop apparently ran into with their swap - most people just brought their crap stash, and those who brought something nice got screwed over. 2) Play fair - don't take more than your share. That was another problem that was present at the Loop swap. But I'm not really worried about the KOLers in this respect - we all know each other fairly well...so reprecussions are totally a viable option (no scones for you!) (Kidding! Well...sorta. They're damn good scones.)

But other than that - bring half-balls, projects-worth of yarn, unfinished objects that just don't speak to you, whatever. We'll have four blankets spread on the floor (no half-naked rolling in the yarn please...yes, I'm looking at you Henry) - 1) good stuff 2) UFOs 3) partial balls 4) everything else. Hopefully, everyone will be able to find something that they'll be happy to give a new home to.

Sound good? I'll keep you all updated - I imagine that it'll be sooner rather than later.