Thursday, June 9, 2011

Happy Woman Buried Under Sock Yarn

I have an enormous amount of sock yarn. It's slowly taking over the rest of my stash. But I had no idea how much really until I decided to catalogue it all on Ravelry. I just took 105 pictures of sock yarn to put on my stash. Now this does not mean that I only have 105 skeins of sock yarn, nor does this mean that I don't make socks out of yarns that are in another yarn weight. This does mean that I just took 105 pictures of just the sock weight yarn in my stash that I can find, and is not being used on another project, sorted by brand and color.

And you know what? I don't have enough. I only have three skeins of Socks That Rock, and one skein of Socks That Rock Silkie. That can't possibly be enough to work such a fabulous yarn. I know me. I've done four pairs of Opal socks and still haven't gotten Opal out of my system. Colinette's Jitterbug is very nice, and Fly Dyed Monarch works up with a similarly lovely hand but it's not the same. I've gone over to knitting some Cherry Tree Hill Supersock and Shibui to ease the pain of not having enough Socks That Rock but I still want more. It's like chocolate, more is better.

My housemates have said that that is quite enough and that I don't really need more sock yarn. It'll take me hours to put it all up on Ravelry and if I buy more it'll take even longer. John says I can buy more when I've knit up 105 pairs of socks. I very carefully explained to him that some sock patterns actually require more than one color of yarn, in the case of fair isle, and that some knee high socks actually use several skeins of yarn. And would he really want me to suffer from not having soothing cotton/bamboo ankle socks in summer, and warm merino superwash fair isle thigh highs in winter? Of course not. I even use my sock weight yarn to make other things, gloves, mittens, baby clothes. I even keep all the little balls of leftover yarn for turning into an afghan later.


Leonard says that I can have all the sock yarn I want provided that he gets to pinch as much from my stash as he can get his grubby little sock knitting hands on. He is eyeing my Zauberball Crazy. It may have been an error to teach him how to knit socks.

Just because my sock yarn now takes up an 18" x 18" x 3' bin plus 2 really large baskets does not mean I have to much yarn. My other yarn takes up 7 more bins plus a basket, several sweater bags, a couple boxes and thats not counting the roving. I have not yet reached the critical mass of more yarn than I can knit in my lifetime. I divided up the sock yarn into projects and at my current rate of sock knitting, about a sock a month or so, it should only take me 4 1/2 years. I'm only 38, that's plenty of time.

In fact, it may even be time to get more sock yarn...

4 comments:

Leohat said...

The citizens of Sockistan require Lebensraum.

robintheknitter said...

The citizens of Sockistan can go get their own yarn, and put it in their own stash room and take their manifest destiny rhetoric and shove it up their darning widgets.

Leohat said...

AH HA. Proof that the Acrylics are violent warmongers and must be purged from society.

Anonymous said...

In love with the stuff myself.