23 December, 2007

Creaking Leather is the Sound of the Season

I don't carry a wallet, but if I did it would be groaning right now. There was a sale at Webs, and one on Schaefer at Little Knits. Schaefer is the bane of my Yarn Diet existence. I don't know what it is about their color sense, but I want desperately to bathe in the colors of every skein I see. It's completely inspiring and more than a little disturbing, especially because Schaefer is not cheap.

Oh well. One of my 101 in 1001 goals is to knit from my stash for an entire year. With the 5000 yards of sweater-weight yarn I bought at Webs (neutral colored sweater yarn for $7.50/lb helped), the Anne and Trenna from Little Knits, and the 4200 yards of light gray Brown Sheep fingering weight yarn my mom bought at a garage sale for $5, I think maybe this year is my year. But I'm only cautiously optimistic; Stitches West is in February, after all.

Speaking of my 101 in 1001, I went through it and updated the things I finished. Not really surprisingly, most of the things I completed are knitting-related. Some of them don't even really factor in anymore and I'll have to re-work them in the next week or two. But overall, it's a nice reminder that even after not looking for an entire year (there's goal #1 to re-start!) I'm still accomplishing some things on the list.

Christmas Eve is tomorrow. Jer, Elizabeth and I are going to two parties tonight: one at Meredith's and one at the Van Over's. ManCandy's flight got cancelled this morning - conveniently before he had to haul himself to the airport - so he's coming home tomorrow morning instead. He'll miss the parties, but since he's not so much down with the planned events I don't think he's too broken up about it. There's a tension between us on this point, because he feels that planned events are tiring and boring and he tends to be very quiet and sit alone during them, while I enjoy being social and meeting the occasional new person. When I invited him to the Van Over's party tonight, his first reaction was "Hell no. I don't know any of those people. There's no way I'd go to that party." It hurt that he refused to even entertain the idea of meeting people I've known for nearly 10 years now, who are only around once or twice per year, and who - in the case of a couple of them - have had major impact on my life. Today, it feels like he doesn't care to meet people who are important to me. Tomorrow, I will have mellowed and probably won't be as upset. Or at least I hope so, but I'd like to think that if our situation was reversed, I'd be willing to at least stop in and meet people for a few minutes before going home to crash.

I'm really ready for this entire holiday season to be over. Next week we've got a gathering on Thursday and we're heading to my mom's on Friday; and I expect I'll have to smooth things over for at least Thursday night as well. *sigh* Relationships are hard; I suppose if they were easy, they wouldn't be worth much. Aaaaand I'm going to stop venting now.

Look! Pretty yarn! (Pictures from Little Knits)

Schaefer Anne - Cranberry Liquor

Schaefer Trenna - Blue Cruise at Sunset

Schaefer Trenna - Plum Golden Harvest

Honestly, how could I have been expected to resist those?! The Anne will become a Bee Fields Shawl and the other two I'll have to think about for a bit. Please excuse me - I'm off to finish my bloody Christmas knitting while watching Angel. Something about ordering eight thousand yards of yarn (that's 4.5 MILES! Oh my god.) makes me feel like finishing things; I can't put my finger on why.