Despite my rule about no more than 3 projects at a time, I caved in and started something new – and it’s not from the Handy Book of Patterns.

I finally started Em’s pink poncho. Mind you, it’s been quite warm around here of late, so it won’t see much wear – but better late than never 🙂
I have only seven 50g balls of yarn, so I decided to do a narrow poncho, rather than a wide. After perusing the many, many poncho patterns out there, I’m winging it. I’ve cast on enough stitches to get it over her head, done a few rows of garter stitch, and now I’m going to do stockinette with increases only at the centre front and centre back, not four sets of increases as in a wide poncho. Then she can wear it with the straight side at the front, or the points at the front. I’m using yarn overs for increases, then I think I’ll use my lovely “Knitting On The Edge” book and do a lace edging.
Lets hope it all works out the way I think it will!
Tomorrow is another Dance Day – 12 hours in a crowded school hall. It’s that time of year *sigh*. So I shall take the poncho and hide in a corner with my knitting.
I’ll bet it doesn’t happen 😉

Well, the day started out well!
I got this in the mail finally 🙂

Inspiration is mine!!! I love this book, why didn’t anyone tell me about it before? I’ll have to get the sweater book now. I love the way it has all the sizes and all the gauges so you can use anything to knit with, more or less. As soon as I finish something, I’ll start something from this book.
And yesterday I went to the local craft store for a sewing pattern, and I picked up a pattern leaflet. It was cheap enough ($2!) and I liked the cover cardi, nice and simple, and casual.

The recommended yarn is 50% wool and 50% acrylic, and really cheap, but for a casual around-the-house and toss-in-the-wash cardi, it’ll do fine.
But after I got it home, I looked at the other pattern. And I looked at it again. And it’s drawing me in, I must say.

I can feel my oath to not buy more yarn wavering. It’s on special for 20% off until Sunday. It would be a crime not to buy it, wouldn’t it? 😉
Then I got home, and put on a load of washing. After eleven years, and a month of tormenting me, my washing machine finally shit itself. I’ve been in denial for the past month, ignoring all the warning signs, hoping it would just carry on, but alas, she is dead. Being eleven years old, I doubt it’s worth fixing, especially seeing as it appears to be both the water pump and the motor. So tomorrow I go forth to waste good money on a housework machine. But better that than hand washing!!
Then, as we were preparing to leave for Em’s dancing lessons, I realised that I couldn’t find two costumes I was taking to the studio for kids to try on. They were nowhere to be found. After spending 10 minutes of ripping the house apart, I called DH at work.
It was garbage night last night.
For some reason, he picked up the plastic bag containing the two completed costumes from the kitchen table, and took it out for the garbage men to collect this morning.
They’re gone. So I now have to go and buy $60 worth of fabric to replace them and start them over.
The sewing will never end, I fear.

I finished a sock!
I know, I said that yesterday, but today I have proof 🙂

I guess that it didn’t take as long as I felt it did – by the time it was finished, I felt as thought I’d been knitting it for months, but according to my nifty knitting diary, I only started it on August 10, and I had a few sick days inbetween. So around a fortnight.
I feel like I haven’t had a FO in ages. I partly blame the dance costumes, but I am now down to 35 to go, with around 9 more weeks to get them done.
It shouldn’t be a problem – if I don’t keep ignoring it to knit, that is 😉

My computer is doing odd things of late. I have two CD drives – one is a burner, and one is an old fashioned CD-Rom drive. They are both suffering behavioural problems.
It can be quite amusing when the CD-Rom drive starts dancing. In and out and in and out, half in, all out, half out, all in. All by itself.
Anyway, computer troubles aside, I have a finished sock!! Hooray! I do not have a picture, as I will wait until tomorrow when I have natural daylight and do not have to try to use the night setting on my digital camera. I haven’t learnt to use it properly yet, and all my pictures come out blurry 🙁
And speaking of bad quality pictures, here’s another Emily-from-the-vault picture. Can you say Fat Baby? 🙂

Annie wrote on her blog a few days ago about S.O.S (State of the Stash). I read through her list, and thought “Well, that’s not so bad!” So tonight I got thinking about S.O.S and I decided to have a look at my stash and bare it to the world. I’m not actually going to show you each component of my stash – I’m not far enough along in my recovery to face that yet 😉
When I picked up the needles again a year or so ago, I decided that I was only going to buy yarn as I needed it. No stashing, just buy the yarn for each project as I started it.

Within 6 weeks of that misguided notion, I bought this as my stash box. It’s designed for under bed storage. Nice and inconspicuous. I can still kid myself that I’m not stashing yarn. And seeing as I’m only buying it as I need it, I’ll just pop the yarn in there until I get caught up in my knitting.
A while after that, I bought this box. It also lives under the bed. I needed it because the yarn that wouldn’t fit in the flat box kept falling off the top.

I justified this box by saying I needed somewhere to keep the single balls and small amounts of yarn for little projects like socks and hats and the like. It was easier than finding the single balls among the big projects that I wasn’t stashing in the big box.

I had to buy this box a few weeks ago, after my Pusher sent me the Big Box of Yarn. And I seem to have filled it up pretty quickly. It lives under the coffee table in the corner, out of sight, but close at hand.
Keep in mind that we live in a very small 2 bedroom villa. I don’t have anywhere else to hide boxes. Which is a problem, as I also have this.

So I’m not going to buy any more yarn until the yarn I have can fit into the boxes. Yeah right. 😉
I can’t keep cardboard boxes, because someone in the house eats them.

Note the evidence beside her.
And just because I found the picture on a CD tonight, and it’s one that I love, here’s Em at age 3 or so. This was the first time that she had enough hair to fit into pigtails. 🙂 Unfortunately, you can’t see the pigtails very well. She was almost completely bald until she was 2 or so 🙂