because I need a new project

The yarn I bought finally arrived, and, boy, does it ever reek. I knew it would, though. The woman I bought it from warned me that it had been stored in mothballs. Initially, I thought that was a deal-breaker, but, having used the yarn before, I knew it would be perfect for a new project I have in mind. Internet searches had already informed me that the yarn has been discontinued, so when the seller told me she had turned up another skein of yarn that she would include for the same price, that clinched the sale.

It took forever for the yarn to get here, but that is another story. Now that it has, I have to deal with the smell. Apparently some people actually like the smell of mothballs. I am not one of them. After opening the package, I immediately placed the box and its contents on the glider on the back porch. It was 38° degrees outside and raining, but the yarn spent the rest of the day and that night out on the porch. I couldn't have it in the house, after all. I brought it in the next morning, but it still smelled bad.

Next, I took it to the basement and loosely re-wound all the tightly-wound yarn cakes. It sat on an open shelf in the basement all day yesterday. It still smelled bad. Currently, the yarn is in a lidded plastic container with one of those room freshener cakes. This room freshener has been working for an entire large room in the basement, so I am hoping it will do that trick, but I am not optimistic.

I checked on Ravelry, of course, to see how other knitters have dealt with this problem. There is not a yarn-related issue I could possibly come up with that has not already been addressed on Ravelry. Suggestions ranged from ridiculous to way-more-work-than-I-would-ever-do. So now my plan is to try one thing and then another until a) the smell goes away or b) I get tired of trying and use the yarn anyway. I'll keep you posted. Let me know if you have any suggestions.

knitter's block?

If writers can have writer's block, then I guess knitters can have knitter's block. That would explain my recent dry spell, anyway. I have finished all the projects I was working on, and I just can't think of anything new that I want to knit. It's not that I don't have enough yarn - I don't think you can imagine how much yarn I have. Oh, I haven't reached SABLE (Stash Acquired Beyond Life Expectancy) yet, but I can knit with what I've got for a long time. And it's not that I don't have patterns I am interested in. I have almost seven hundred (!) patterns saved on Ravelry, the amazing online knitting community, and most of them are free, so it's not a lack of funds, either.

I am just not inspired, I guess. Working at the yarn shop was so inspiring. We were always getting new knitting magazines or books, and our customers were always coming in with new ideas they had picked up somewhere else. Most exciting of all, twice a year the sales reps came in with new yarn from all the leading yarn companies. We would come in even if we weren't scheduled to work on those days. Creativity was always in the air in our shop. At my house, not so much.

I have been working on fingerless mitts lately, almost to the exclusion of everything else. That is because I have found a market for them, and can turn a little profit on each pair that I make. Since I am still unemployed, this constitutes a little pocket money for me. And, no, I don't spend it all on more yarn. It might be that I am just sick of working on mitts, I guess, but there are dozens of patterns for them, so it is not like I am knitting the same thing over and over. (Although I find, to my dismay, that is what people seem to want : "Oh, I want a pair just like hers!")

I belong to two knitting groups that meet on a monthly basis, and those are very important to me. So much so, in fact, that I went to one earlier this month in the midst of a "major snow event," as winter weather is now called. Not everyone was there, but I was not the only one who drove in, either. I'm going to the other group on Thursday. Maybe they will inspire me. I don't know. I know for sure they will admire my work and be glad to see me. And that's a good thing.

Norwegian wool

(Okay, Ben was the first to use the title for this post, but, come on, it's a natural.)

I got two skeins of beautiful red yarn in the mail yesterday from Bergen, Norway. I received them in exchange for a skein of yarn I sent to a knitter whom I "met" on Ravelry. Ravelry is a community of knitters and crocheters from all over the world who share patterns and tips and ideas. I would need to devote a whole post to rave about how much I love Ravelry - and maybe I will. (You can find a link at: http://www.ravelry.com/tour/peek)

Are you surprised that I would be interested in something like this? Don't be - I am coming out of the closet with my latest obsession, knitting. Maybe you think "obsession" is too strong a word for it. Trust me, it's not. I feel like Hermey (that's what IMDb says his name is) in the "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" television special: "Molars and bicuspids! You've no idea!" How does one explain something like that without sounding, well, a little crazy, a little - obsessed?

I have always had enthusiasms, I would say. Some of you may remember all the way back to my button collection (since passed on to Julie.) I think I got in pretty much on the ground floor with my toaster collection. If we even see toasters as nice as the ones I have, they cost way more than I would pay for them. Then there was the postcard-collecting phase. How exciting it was to drive to a postcard show in Wooster or Columbus and find fifteen or twenty postcards we had never seen before! We would probably still be in that phase, actually, if there were any Elyria postcards left that we don't already have.

With knitting, however, I have finally found the creative outlet I have lacked for years. I am absolutely fascinated by the idea that if you gave ten different knitters the same yarn, they would come up with ten different and unique projects. I am thrilled by the potential of new yarn. With each project that I work on, I feel like I am uncovering a new treasure - how will this look when I add a new color? I am absurdly proud of my finished objects and want to show them off to everyone. (If you want to, you can see them at my Flickr account at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/23003429@N06/)

See what I mean? I just can't help it. I think this one is going to last.