Cold Sheep

I did something stupid. Something vastly, horribly, fantastically stupid. I made a bet. With Jason. About yarn.

Some of you can see where this is going. Those of you who can are probably already laughing.

See, it all began in Germany...

While on my honeymoon overseas I made the happy discovery that in Germany, there are yarn shop EVERYWHERE. And I mean that. We were there for just shy of two weeks, and we went into a total of nine yarn shops. Only one of them was intentional. (Wollmeise, but that is deserving of a blog post all its own.)

I thought it was interesting to see the differences between German yarn shops and American yarn shops. Shops in America are bigger, and tend to carry a little bit of a lot of things. German shops (at least I noticed from the ones I went into) were much smaller on the average, and didn't seem to carry as much variety. The biggest difference that struck me was that yarn shops in America seem to encourage knitters to go in and just hang out. I have yet to go into an American shop that doesn't have some assortment of chairs or sofas, more likely than not filled with some number of knitters just hanging out and doing their thing. None of the shops in Germany had any seating for customers inside. I'm still not quite sure why that was, but I thought it was an interesting difference.

The other happy discovery I made regarding knitting and Germany was that German yarn is way cheaper than yarn in the US. Of course, the yarns that were cheaper were mostly yarns manufactured in Germany, so I suppose it makes sense. All I know is I scored several skeins of ONline and Zauberballe for the equivalent of 50% off. And Wollmeise, of course. But that is deserving of a post of its own.

Amid all this craziness of abundant yarn shops and cheap yarn, I ended up making this phenomenally stupid bet. For the life of me, I can't remember exactly how it came up. All I remember is I was in Rothenberg ob der Tauber, clutching a bag stuffed full of cheap yarn, and telling my husband that I could go six months withuot buying yarn. I know, I know. I don't know what happened either.

Well, that was in August. The bet officially started in the beginning of September, and I'm now just over two weeks into it. There's not much actually riding on it (the winner gets treated to a fancy dinner out at the restaurant of their choosing) but it's still a bet, and I still want to win, if for no other reason than to prove to myself that I can say I'll do something and actually stick to it! Abandoned KALs aside, I want to show that I can follow through with something I say I'm going to do.

So far I've been doing quite well. Mostly because I haven't really had time to do much knitting, between starting a new job and having work done on the house. I've finished a pair of socks and a shawlette, and I'm about halfway through the second of the abandoned fingerless mitts that I really need to get finished up for my awesome friend. I have a couple of larger projects planned that will hopefully carry me through the bulk of the Cold Sheep time. (two afghans and a sweater)

The really awful time is going to come around Christmas when I'll have a little bit of money that is all mine to spend with no strings or guilty feelings attached to. Maybe I'll save my Wollmeise for that. :)

In the meantime, I need to get my shawlette blocked and photographed, and my socks photographed. Hopefully my next post will have some pretty pretty pictures.

i'm not dead

I promise. Nor have I forgotten how to type, nor has my computer been kidnapped by evil computer-stealing aliens who have an irrational hatred for blogging. Although if the latter did happen, then I would have a very cool post ready to put up if/when I ever managed to get my compter back.

And for once my lack of posting doesn't stem from sheer laziness. I know, right?! Crazy!

And speaking of crazy, that pretty much sums up my life right now. A great big ball of crazy. Not all of it is the bad sort of crazy, but it's certainly not all the good sort of crazy either. Mostly it's just hectic. And, well, crazy.

I promise promise promise (see! a triple promise! I'm really serious!) that I will start posting again soon. I've got a lot to blog about, and I'm thinking that breaking it up into multiple smaller posts might be more doable than trying to hammer out one massive post. We'll see how that plan goes.

But for now, I'm still here. And still knitting!