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You know what?

I put in some yarn room organization time last night. It felt good to clean things up and make some decisions on what needs to go. There's a corner of the room I can see again! And the sewing machine is accessible once more. I know more yarn needs to find new homes. It's so hard to make those decisions; if I think I might use it, I want to keep it. The problem is, when is might? This year? Within 5 years? In this lifetime? Some might yarns are definitely worth keeping, like good quality basic yarns in non-funky colors. High quality luxury yarns in lovely colors. Beautiful sock yarns... Of course, there are limits to how much is worth keeping. How do you decide what to keep?

You know what I love? Being able to see more of my yarns, and having easier access to it. With the new shelves, I don't have to move 3 bins to get to the one I want. Love it.

Slacker Knathlete

The Knitting Olympics (and the actual Olympics, hehe) begins Friday and I don't have a project yet! I swear I've been thinking about it. Obviously, not hard enough... It's just... I have so many things I should knit soon: a couple of baby sweaters, an afghan or three, socks and a sweater for Scott, socks and a vest I promised Gram last week (what, am I crazy?)... and then there are the knitalongs I'm in... and the WIP list is not getting any shorter. In fact, this weekend, while combing through the WIP list to target WIPs to abandon, I found 2 more WIPs that never made it onto the list, so my count is now 2 higher! What's up with that??

You know, my mom was eyeing my Catharina Rose shawl when it was a WIP and I was worried she'd swipe it. She didn't. I was shocked. While still in shock, I offered to knit her a shawl and asked her what she'd like. You know what she'd like? A black one. A black lace shawl that would go with everything. She wants me to go blind, she does. Add lace shawl to the above list.

You know another thing? I've started only 3 projects this year: anonymous socks (product of startitis), Kiri, and Creamsicle T. 3 projects! I used to do that in a day! 3 projects in 5 weeks, it's a record, I say! Not only that, since I started my WIP Management campaign in November, I've started 11 proejcts and completed all but 4: the 3 listed above, plus Curlycue Scarf started Dec 28. Holy whip them WIPs moly. Dare I say, it works! WIP Management works!

Let's bring it up another notch. After reviewing my WIP list this weekend, I targeted 10 WIPs to abandon. This will bring my WIP count down to 36. You newcomers can stop swooning, this is good news! Down from 67 to 36. That's 72% of the way to my goal of 24. It makes me dizzy, it does. Yeehaw!

And don't even think about mentioning a Stash Management campaign, I won't have it.

The cap didn't look or feel right. With the tighter body, looser sleeves were out of place. Plus, it looked like the sleeve cap needed to be a few rows longer.

I took out 2 inches of ease above the elbow, added slight bell shaping below the elbow, adjusted the cap decreases, and crossed my fingers. Since I was working with 2 inches less fabric for seaming, I slowed down cap decreases and added in a few extra rows. Once done, I sewed it in and tried it on:

Not bad! It's definitely snug on my upper arm: no room for growth. The cap has a little extra fabric at the top, so I unseamed and took out a couple of rows.

I'm 80% done reknitting the second sleeve. I'm guessing I'll have Creamsicle T done in time for the Olympics. Hurrah! One project complete to balance the new Olympics project.