Kitty!

I got a kitty yesterday! His name is Salem, and this is him:

He likes to play with my yarn and needles while I'm knitting. :/ But I loves him anyway!

Twi-Hard Knits

Okay, so I'm a total Twi-hard. And I really love finding knitting patterns based off things that are worn by my favorite characters in my favorite movies. In fact, the whole reason I started knitting was because I really, really, really wanted a pair of Bella's mittens, the ones she wears in both Twilight and New Moon.

Of course, I still haven't knit the mittens yet, because I wanted to make sure I'd gotten in lots of knitting practice first. But I'm planning on knitting myself four pairs this fall, in four different colors (gray, red, blue, and purple), as well as a pair for my sister (in brown). I guess I could've just bought a pair from the original maker, Ruth Cross, but $74.26 is just more than I can spend on a pair of mittens, even though it's totally worth it, since they're hand-knit. This way though, I can afford several pairs, and I can also get my hands on other knits from the Twilight (and other) movies! Now, before I get back to my original point, here's another picture of the mittens (from the Ruth Cross website):

Aren't they lovely?

Anyway, I didn't originally plan for this blog entry to be about all the great things you can knit from Twilight, but I guess that's where it's headed, because what I originally wanted to share is that I started knitting Bella's scarf from the baseball scene. Great pictures of this scarf seem to be very hard to find, so here's one from its Ravelry pattern page:

Now, I love this scarf and am beyond excited to be making it! It's made by seaming together a bunch of knit panels, and the seaming is apparently a bitch, but it's supposed to be totally worth it in the end. I've only finished one of the panels, but I'm actually really glad this scarf is made the way it is, because I usually find knitting scarves to be very boring (which is sad, really, because scarves are one of my very favorite accessories!).

And that was what I wanted to share!

My Yarn Stash Is Expanding...

I'm getting better, like way better, at knitting. Of course, I blame the HPKCHC for this (and they happily accept the blame :P), but I've recently decided that there's nothing I can't knit. And my yarn stash reflects this... Because it just keeps getting bigger, and I just can't seem to stop myself buying more. So, to make myself feel better, I decided to run some statistics (because I am a statistics nerd):

As of right now, I have 122 different types of yarn stashed (I am also completely anal about keeping my stash updated on Ravelry.).

• Of those 122, 52 were given to me, either in swaps, as gifts, or because I won them, so I didn't even pay for about 43% of the yarn in my stash (well, if we're not taking individual skeins into account, which I'm not). See, I already feel better!
• 38 of them I bought for a specific project, so there's another 31% that I no longer feel bad about!
• Now, the other 26%... Yeah, I feel kind of bad about that. Not that it isn't perfectly useable yarn! I just haven't figured out what to use it for yet.

Okay, so I'd really like to keep the I-have-absolutely-no-idea-what-I'm-going-to-do-with-this-yarn-but-I-just-had-to-buy-it-because-it's-so-pretty-or-it-was-so-cheap percentage at like... 10-ish%? Of course, yarn like that is really great to have lying around, for those last-minute gifts, or for when you're pattern browsing and find the perfect pattern that you just have to cast on right NOW! But right now, I have about 2.5-ish times too much of that yarn.

So, on another note, I've officially decided that Caron Simply Soft is my go-to cheapy yarn of choice. I have a lot of it, but it's just so soft, and there are so many colors, and it's soft, and it has really excellent drape, and there aren't any dye lots, so running out and having to buy more is okay, and did I mention that it's soft?

Another thing I really need to work on is not buying yarn for projects that I know I won't get to for a while. :/ I do that a lot... But it's like, I decide that I really wanna make something, and then I pick out the yarn, and I have to buy it as soon as possible! Which is just silly, because most likely, the yarn isn't going to go anywhere.