Busy, Busy

It has been nearly non-stop around here. There's been reading and knitting and de-cluttering, all of which make for a tired body but a lot of happy.

Some time ago - and if I wrote about this before, please bear with the repetition - on a whim I bought a book by Jennifer Chiaverini called "Circle of Quilters." I am not and have no interest in becoming a quilter (the obsessions I have with knitting and books are quite enough, TYVM), but I *loved* the book, staying up way late until I finished it in one sitting. One of my seniors, who is a wonderful quilter, borrowed some of the other books by this author, and then loaned them to me a week ago Friday (July 15). I read all 4 in less than 2 days. They, and the rest of Chiaverini's books, are in my "To Buy Later" cart at Amazon. These are the sort of books you will want to read again sometime, and the stories are just as applicable to knitters as they are to quilters. I wrote a review on the "Circle of Quilters" book, so read more at the Amazon site.

On the knitting side, my seniors' group received a nice big bag of LYS-type yarns, mostly Cascade 220 and similar basic wools. Since we've been getting more and more wools, and I've been trying (not very successfully ) to knit them all up or find homes where they'll become charity items, The Powers That Be in our group have at last decided that it's OK to use these wools for projects to be sold at our holiday boutique, labeled of course with instructions for hand washing. Hurray!! Nice yarns to knit with for charity projects, and I don't have to buy them!!

There was one skein of a lovely mossy heathered green Cascade 220 in the bag, and it immediately cried out to become something pretty in my hands. So, having just seen my friend Marie's pattern for the Georgiana scarf, that's what it became. Marie's pattern explains or has links to practically anything you could want to know about knitting the scarf. She did hers in a chunky/bulky yarn, but I'm very pleased with the results from this worsted gauge. If you'd like a chart of the pattern, LMK in the comments and I'll send you a pdf file I made.

I used size 9US needles with the Cascade, and blocked it just a little bit extra-hard in width. I didn't want to make the scarf too long, so I stopped knitting at about 60 inches; blocked, it grew to just over 6ft by 5in. I have about 30g of the yarn left, which would have added another foot or so. I also did not knit 2 ends and graft them together, just kept knitting. I don't think our boutique customers will care about the difference. It's a quick knit, since I started and finished this in less than 4 days.

And about the de-cluttering, well I'm feeling pretty chuffed! I've nearly emptied one 7ft by 3ft bookcase, full of 'stuff', especially old magazines. Our recycling barrel has overflowed and weighs a ton, and there's already one largish box full of books for the library. The idea here is that the bookcase will move out of our spare bedroom/yarn room and find a new home, the armoire in the room will move to our bedroom, replacing yet another bookcase, and my yarn tubs will line up along the vacated wall rather than filling the middle of the room, leaving space for walking and the occasional sleep-over visitors. Next up on the de-cluttering agenda is old files; I'm hoping to shrink 4 file drawers down to 2, which will mean getting rid of one file cabinet and making still more room in the craft closet. And, oh, yeah, getting rid of some more books; that's more difficult. Sigh.

Dang! I'm feeling so virtuous!! But in the hubris equation, something's surely going to come back and bite me in the ass.