Playing Hooky (no pun intended)

I have a few confessions to make...

I've been playing hooky from my ripple blanket.  It's not that I don't love the ripple, but sometimes, you just need to think about/ look at/ fixate on another project before the one you're working on is finished.  I used to have a real problem with this until I decided that I would only work on one project at a time.  But seriously people, ripple blankets take a really, really long time to finish.  Especially the particular ripple I love to do which consists of nothing but single crochet through the back loop (sc tbl) until the end of eternity.  This magical stitch makes a beautiful fabric that is cozier than should be possible, but that has a wonderful dreamy drape to it.  It even makes really cheap acrylic seem wonderful.  But it is boring! (Of course, if this blanket was for me, I'd probably be finished by now.)

There's also the fact that for about 2 weeks we thought we might be moving to Chicago.  Now as soon as I heard this, I naturally thought about yarn and knitting and making all kinds of things that I don't really have any occasion to knit while living somewhere that only gets cold about 3 times a year.  I was thinking about mittens and wool sweaters, (with real wool!)  And the imagination was sparking all sorts of inspiration frenzies and visions of walking through snow in a beautiful, perfectly knitted cable knit sweater. But alas, the dream died and the job Mr. Man was hoping to get went to some other (undeserving) candidate (who probably has no appreciation whatsoever for hand-knit sweaters.)  And I had to go back to finding things to knit/crochet that I might actually get to wear here in Houston. But by then I'd already raided my stash and found some pretty awesome and some other not so awesome yarns that I'd forgotten I had.  Well, this sparked another frenzy.  This frenzy had to do with finally knowing what I wanted to make with these certain forgotten yarns.

First up we have Nashua Vignette:

It looks like a lovely yarn, doesn't it.
Well, it isn't.
I bought this yarn years ago (it's now discontinued) to make a sweater, but once I started knitting with it, I hated it.  For one thing it is incredibly scratchy.  For another thing it's really... sproingy.  I don't know any other word to use.  What I'm trying to say is that even though it's a worsted weight yarn it behaves like a bulky weight yarn once you start knitting or crocheting with it.  It just... sproings up! I had a lot of this stuff, too because I bought enough to make a whole sweater, (but not a bulky sweater because, let's face it, Kate Moss I am not, and who else would look good in a bulky sweater?)  It's just been sitting in my stash for 5 years or so but a few weeks ago I had an epiphany about what to make with it.  

Can you guess what it is? (See how sproingy?)

Okay, I'll show you...



Yeah, that's right, I made another Half-granny shawl.  This one was made more for warmth than for prettiness.  I don't really have any plans to wear it out in public.  For one thing, it's huge!  I was trying to use up all that yarn (I still have one ball left.)  And I found a surprising amount of other scraps of very similarly colored yarn hiding out in my stash so I threw that stuff in there too.  Now I have a shawl that I can wrap around myself whenever I have to go outside to let the dog out or whatever, but don't feel like putting on a sweater or jacket. Or just for when I'm cold inside, which happens to me a lot. This shawl is very warm, and it of reminds me a little of the kind of thing you might see on an ancient Italian widow. I kind of hated every minute of working on it because of that crappy yarn, but I do have the satisfaction of knowing that it's no longer in my stash and it is exactly what I was wanting when I decided to make it.  My favorite part is the little picots on the edge.  I need to use more picots.

Okay so even though I do have more to show you of my "playing hooky" projects, I have no more pictures so it will have to come in the next post.

Meanwhile I'd like to know if anyone else is having this playing hooky problem.  Also if anyone else has any yarn in their stash that they hate and don't know what to do with it.  Anyone?