Tuesday, May 17, 2016

WIP Wednesday: Everyone's a Winner Edition

Over Christmas, I read the delightful but rather batty decluttering guide The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Maria Kondo. This book is massively popular and has inspired the much-maligned but completely fantastic practice of KonMari. Basically, with KonMari you gather all of one type of item (clothes, kitchen stuff, books, etc) and go through it item by item, deciding what brings you joy and what has irreplaceable use. If the item does not do either of these things, get rid of it. I realised after reading that book that I have wool and needles and projects squirrelled all over my house that are in desperate need of a sort and declutter. I really had no idea how much yarn I even had! It just seemed to be too big a job to even get started on. However, last Tuesday I woke up with an unexpectedly clean slate and thought, well, let's go. 30 minutes later, my bed looked like this:


It's hard to tell from this photo but that pile of knitting, yarn and needles was about 1 metre high. It includes every piece of knitting and knitting paraphernalia that I own.  I found some crazy stuff - half balls of wool left over from projects I knitted *twelve* years ago. I unravelled a ton of never-to-be-finished projects and tossed everything that looked tired and done.

Three hours later, my stash is neatly sealed and sorted and fits into these three boxes:


Excellent! The KonMari process was dusty and time-consuming but also very rewarding.  I now know what wool I have, how much of it I have and what needles I own. I'm excited about using it all up and my house is just unbelievably neater. (I also discovered a huge pile of UFOs that just need like an hour of work to be completely finished, but that's a story for another day.

In Other News

One thing that is giving me immense joy is my sock yarn blanket.



It's so big now that it's hard for me to get all of it in one photo unless I stand on something (this is not as exciting as it sounds - I am only five foot tall). Unfortunately, I have had to put it aside briefly because of boring deadline knitting. Boo!!!

First up, a pair of the world's most boring brown socks. They were requested by Sam for his birthday, which is next week, so I am Getting Them Done. But seriously, how boring?


Because I could only handle so much brown, I also cast on a pair of socks for my dad's birthday, which is coming up soon.


They are kind of based on the Cable Rib Socks from my favourite sock book Favorite Socks but I increased the stitch count and didn't read the instructions properly so it's really more of an "inspired by". I think it'll look good, though, and it's not made out of brown, which is really what I'm look for at this moment. 

The best thing is, once I get these socks done, more yarn scraps for my blankets. Everyone's a winner in this week's WIP Wednesday :)

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