Monday, May 5, 2014

Some yarn is too beautiful to knit

About two weeks ago, I fell off the wagon...and hard.  I hadn't procured any new yarn since the 4 hanks of madelinetosh and Sweet Georgia sock yarn that my dog, Maddie, gave me as a Christmas present.  Isn't she sweet?  Oh wait....she gave me three hanks for Christmas and then I bought myself four more in January because it was snowy and cold and....I'm weak.   Anyways, the point is, I hadn't increased my sock yarn stash (or general yarn stash) for 3 months, which, I think, is rather impressive.  (This, of course, doesn't include the March shipment of yarn from the Blue Moon Rockin' Sock Club since I technically paid for that back in January, right? Right.)  I was so proud of myself and had promised myself that I wouldn't buy any more sock yarn until I had completed the socks that my current stash was destined to become.

Then, it happened.  It started with just a simple order of madelinetosh Sock in Whiskey Barrel that I actually needed to finish the socks that never end.  But then....oh then...I got the email from Webs advertising some yarn for their 40th anniversary sale and I couldn't help but buy two hanks of Araucania Huasco....that was April 17th.

Then, not 5 days later, I got another email from them.

Araucania Huasco #8 - Purple, Teal, Royal, Fuschia
 This time, they were advertising a closeout on Misti Alpaca Hand Paint Sock and, again, I couldn't resist it.  I mean, it was almost 50% off!  You'd have to be heartless to resist buying at least one....and, thank goodness, I managed to keep myself to just one.

The next day, somehow (I really can't remember what happened), I ended up on KnitPicks and saw their new line of Hawthorne sock yarn....that was $10.99/hank!  What??  So....I bought 4 hanks.  And I still have two on my wishlist that aren't available yet.  Oh, and while I was at it, I bought two skeins of Felici sock yarn that was being discontinued.

All in all, that means that over a period of 6 days, I bought 8 100g hanks of yarn (I'm combining the two Felici 50g skeins into 1 100g hank in my head...same difference right?).  Le sigh....

Anyways, besides feeling the need to confess my relapse, the reason I'm mentioning all of this is that I've realized I may never knit some of that yarn.  Particularly the Araucania Huasco.  And that's not because I may just never get to it....it may actually be a choice to never knit it.

It looks so beautiful as it is - gorgeously painted and twisted into the hank in such a perfect way as to show all the vibrant and rich colors.  They're like two pieces of artwork.  In fact, I'm sort of using them as such right now....they're on display on the shelf under my glass coffee table along with some select other pieces of yarn artwork that I just can't bear to hide in my yarn closet.

Araucania Huasco #5 Green Brown Turquoise
I did buy this yarn with the intent to knit it, but sometimes I'm terrified of ruining its beauty.  What if I pick the wrong pattern and it ends up pooling/flashing in some horrible way?  Or what if the colors just end up muddy and the whole vibrancy disappears into a sock that looks like the dog ate something that made her sick?  Yes, I could always rip it out and try again.  But, to be honest, I'm not entirely sure how to even go about picking patterns for yarn with this many color changes.  I'm totally open to suggestions!

The good news is that it will be awhile before I even need to contemplate this conundrum.  There are at least 5 other hanks in the queue that already have destinies.  So, for now, I will be happy to look at these through my glass table and sigh with contentment and wonder at their beauty.

As for my theatre life, Tempest is closed.  It was a super fast strike and wonderful last show.  But, I was so happy to see that projector go away.  Once we got the projections and QLab working together, we were golden, but getting that to happen was akin to getting a bunch of 5 year olds who just ate birthday cake to sit and quietly watch a movie.  Lots of lessons learned from that, though!

Auditions for both of my theatres have been going on the past two weekends.  One of the shows I'm stage managing next season, Journey to the West, has been cast (and I know the cast list) but I can't mention it to anyone until after it's posted.  And, man, is it hard to keep secrets from your friends when you know if they were/weren't cast for the parts that they wanted!  Spring Awakening has final final callbacks (yes, the final callbacks after the final callbacks) tomorrow night so I should know that one soon too.

So excited for both shows but realizing that my "break" is shorter than I thought (about 10 weeks if I don't include the week I'm working on a Reader's Theatre production).  Hopefully by the time that rolls around, I'll be ready to be busy again.  But, for now, I'm looking forward to extra knitting time, some exercise time (eventually, I swear), and seeing friends time.

And now, I'm off to go continue to knit the never-ending, utterly boring, brown, ginormous sock from hell....never again.

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