I bade my parents adieu before work this morning when I dropped them and their bags off at the ferry terminal to start the long journey home. It was a whirlwind 12-day trip and after all the planning and traveling, training and driving all around Japan, I am left in my empty apartment with this pile of yarn. I am too tired to even look at the pictures from our trip!

Thoughts on my new acquisitions:
* Finally, the black yarn I have been needing to finish my log cabin blanket! It is getting to be the perfect time of year to knit with a big blanket on my lap so this could not have come at a better time.
* Knitpicks makes Palette in some paletable colors now! They are heathered and wonderful and not of the same harsh/gross color families of the original colorways. Hurrah!
* Got my hands on one of Emily's gorgeous sock yarns in "American Patchwork" colorway. I can't remember if I actually talked to my mom about how much I loved this colorway or if she just *knew* and got it for me coincidentally.
* All ready to swatch for my Ms. Marigold, yay!

As soon as I emerge from the post-trip coma, I might actually start to use some of this stuff. It's a good thing I don't have to deal with jet lag! I'm off to get into my pj's, park on the couch and watch season 1 of Brothers and Sisters on DVD.

Posted by Molly at 05:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Thanks to everyone who posted helpful comments this weekend--I am pretty confident that my spam filter isn't weeding out any good comments but it is definitely keeping out all the bad. Yay!

I have been really busy lately and this past weekend was no exception. But miraculously, I did find some time to laze around the house, watch some 30 Rock and finally dig out some of my stash to post up on Ravelry. Maybe that will give me some ideas about what to make with all this stuff, I thought. I have a small apartment with not a lot of storage space, so it's a big weight on my shoulders and I feel like I should be knitting from the stash more than I do.* But when I finally catalogued the yarn I have (most of it, at least), I realized that I don't have that much after all. But the biggest weight on my mind is definitely the aboved photographed yarn. The Elizabeth Lavold Silky Tweed. Isn't it lovely?

I ordered this yarn *thinking* I was ordering Silky WOOL, the yarn that I used to make a leaf lace shawl a year or two ago. I loved the yarn and loved the shawl even more so I ordered some more to make for other friends that have been really kind to me while I was in Japan. But silly me, I didn't read very closely. I didn't know there were different lines of "silky" yarns and was surprised to get something with a different gauge and a totally different feel from what I was expecting. It has been sitting, untouched, in my closet ever since.

What is a girl to do? It really is lovely yarn, that is not the issue. But I have only three skeins of each color (just one shy of a Ms. Marigold!) so I'm not quite sure what to use it for. I'm sure the tweed will not suit the lace patterns I had in mind anyway. The thing that kills me the most is that my dear mother went out of her way to order and ship this great yarn to me. I don't mean by posting this that it went underappreciated. In fact, avoiding letting her in on the disappointment is part of the reason this yarn hasn't been mentioned in all the time it's sat here (certainly at least a year). Mum, you want it back? Keeping my eye on the mail for that Sugar 'n Creme you sent last week, too. Thanks!

Now what am I going to do with all this tweed?

*I have been better this year and haven't bought any yarn since going home for Thanksgiving 2006.

Posted by Molly at 04:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It's that time of year again, without a doubt the most wonderful time when the students leave school and I am left sitting at my desk for a long expanse of days, with hardly any responsibility to tie me down but reading blogs and getting back into the routine of updating my own. I know a lot of people that dread these long days with not a job in sight, but I must be very good at scheduling my free time because I always find these days are gone too quickly!

I never knit at work, but you can't stop me from thinking about it! Planning projects, making lists, dreaming of that elusive weekend when all I have to do is lay around at home and knit. At the moment I'm thinking about this delicious yarn that came in the mail from my good friend Becky in Canada. She was the first friend that I turned onto knitting who turned out to be a real knitting freak just like me! Imagine my excitement when this popped out of a surprise package from her, along with decaf coffee (wheee!) and all sorts of other treats! 450 meters of Blue Face Leicester DK Wool... I might have to turn this into a bright lace shawl to get me through the dark winter months, don't you think?

And remember that baby sweater? It fits well (with room to stretch) and the parents couldn't have been happier to finally receive it. I take back all the bad stuff I ever said about knitting this. It was totally worth it--look at that chubby face!

Posted by Molly at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I've been in a bit of a knitting slump lately, did you notice? I don't have any big projects to focus on or anything that I am particularly passionate about knitting. I could knit stockinette socks til the cows come home, but where's the fun in that?

When I was growing up, my mom always had a lot of fabric. Shelves of it. I never understood it, but didn't question the madness as long as I was on the receiving end of lots of flannel nightgowns, quilts and doll clothing like you wouldn't believe. But now I get it. I've turned into my mom (I've got fabric, too).

I avoided flash-your-stash day for a few reasons, primarily because all this stuff was wedged into my one closet with so much other junk that I just didn't want to deal with my closet actually exploding. There's also the part where I didn't really want to admit to myself how much there is. But today is about the 10th consecutive rainy day here so I decided it would be a good time to take a look at the inside of my closet and get things organized before summer.

Now, I'm sure that a lot of you think this stash is amateur business. I know, compared with a lot of knitbloggers out there this is peanuts. But since coming to Japan I have been consciously trying not to buy yarn that I couldn't use right away, since I'm going to have to SHIP THIS STUFF HOME when I leave next summer. Not to mention that I'm trying to save for grad school. And this is self-control? I have a lot of really nice yarn in here, and I don't want to knit just anything with it. I need some inspiration! Can I really make that Noro Cash Laine pullover when summer is on the way? I might just have to crank up the ac and begin. I am also desperately in need of some 1-2 skein projects for all these lovely randoms that I've been accumulating. I have so many balls that don't seem to be quite enough for anything... what to do!?

Posted by Molly at 03:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Technology rocks!

Thank you to everyone who helped or at least offered to help me work through my blog questions. I just had to do a little more fiddling and I got things all straightened out.

My internet at home was broken tonight but I got adventurous and tried to fix it--going from moping on the couch and thinking how I could just go to bed early to importing all my old entries from my old blog in about 45 minutes. It was amazingly simple! I decided to look through my old posts a bit and it was like looking back through an old high school yearbook or something. Here are my favorite moments:

My first attempts at lace, or the good old days when I had enough empty space in my apartment to take a blog picture with no clutter blocking the light or crowding the subject.

Maniacally knitting up a skinny scarf for a ball where most people were way too drunk to even notice. I did love that Jetsons-esque hairstyle, though.

Then there was the life-changing Clapotis, which seems to have symbolically marked my transition from knitting awkward ugly things that either didn't fit or were totally impractical to being able to make things that I use and love!

Knitting my favorite socks on the southernmost and the northernmost islands of Japan all in one lucky summer!

..and lots more in the recent past that I'm not feeling nostalgic about yet.

New music!

Has everyone heard about Jack Johnson's new CD? Probably, since I am generally two steps behind when it comes to what is new and cool. But I just got a copy of this today and I'm loving it. Even though it is lullabyes for kids, Jack Johnson is great and he even covers my favorite White Stripes song, We're Going to be Friends (it plays at the beginning of Napoleon Dynamite, I think).

Bright colors!

The last item up for discussion is this Kureyon yarn, color #165, that I picked up in Tokyo a few months ago. My mom and I saw it crocheted up in a chevron scarf and we both thought it would be such a fun project to learn crochet. "You can find an easy crochet chevron pattern anywhere," my mom told me confidently. I quickly bought into that, got the right sized crochet hook and hopped (or rather dragged) home with my new finds. But I can't find a crochet chevron scarf pattern ANYWHERE. Am I missing out on some kind of secret crochet resource or something? I'm starting to think I might have to cave and just knit a scarf with it, so if anyone can point me in the direction of a good pattern (ahem, MUM?) please do.

That's all I've got for good things today. One not so good thing is that I have to be at work in the morning (Saturday). I might have been better off without the internet tonight!

Posted by Molly at 09:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

Isn't this the loveliest yarn? I got a surprise package from Janine the other day with her very own beautiful handspun. It was so unexpected, and a very welcome surprise to have rubberbanded to my doorknob when I came home from school. Thank you, Janine! Now I just have to decide what to make!

There hasn't been a whole lot of knitting excitement around here as I've been spending a lot of spare time reconfiguring my computer. It sure feels good to have things working again, and fast! Instead of installing the Japanese Photoshop program that I got at school, I've started to use Gimp, a free photo editing software. So far, I'm really happy with it! It's fast and easy to use (and having the commands all in English really can't be beat). Now I just have to do some knitting around here and I'll get to use it. I've made it onto the sleeves of my Sesame cardigan so I'm considering letting myself start a swatch for some fair isle mitts this weekend. Would I be crazy to jump into 3+ colors on my first project?

And in personal news, I'm into week three of my new caffeine-free lifestyle. I'm drinking hot water at tea ceremony, decaffeinated tea when I get to work in the morning, and the other day I was at Starbucks and I didn't cave. I feel great! I did, however, have to let chocolate back into my diet. It doesn't have THAT much caffeine, I told myself, and the kids in my ESS club handmade chocolates for Valentine's day. It would have been cruel of me to refuse. If I just stick with dark chocolate, I can still feel good about my new "healthy" living.

Posted by Molly at 01:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)