Saturday, February 18, 2006

My Stash

Completely out of hand. I have so much yarn. I will NEVER be able to knit it all up. Certianly not by hand and not even by my machines, of which I have 15.
Cashmere, silk, cotton, wool, Merino, angora, alpaca, mink, all sorts of wool. Cones and balls/skeins.

The attic is full. The cupboard under the stairs is full. The smallest bedroom is full - so full I can't even get to it all and don't know what is there. Just writing this excites me! ALL THAT YARN!!!! The look of yarn, the feel of, the possibilties, it gives me a buzz.

My head gets full of ideas, even when I am knitting up one design, I am thinking of another. Especially so when hand knitting, so much so, that i often have 3- 4 garments on the go at the same time. Machine knitting is a bit easier as I can at least finish before I start something else.

Anyway, back to this yarn. Ideally, I could get rid of the dogs, my partner and my phone and my pc and anything else that takes me away from knitting. I could lock myself in and just knit. That way, by age 150 I might just have knitted thru a quarter of my stash. Why is life so f***ing short?
Why do 24hrs pass so quickly? Why must we waste time sleeping? Going to the loo and eating and drinking. I think we should have been designed better. Self maintaining, no food, no drink, no toilet, no sleep. THEN we might have time to do what we want to do.

Oh, and of course no clapped out bodies. I used to be able knit up and sew together two sweaters in one day(machine) and still do the the dogs, play with them, walk them, watch tv, cook and relax by hand knitting.

Now this friggin disease makes me feel 87 instead of 47. I walk and move like an old person. I can't do anything for very long without seizing up. If I get carried away when HKing or MK'ing and forget to move every few minutes, I seize up and am stuffed. I have to roll myself onto the floor where I can slowly uncurl my legs and sloooowly get up on my knees, crawl to the wall and lever myself up on to my feet. If John is in, he can haul me up. Then of course my hands seize up and knitting becomes a pain. Well, a worse pain cos everything is a pain!

Which is why I ignored medical advice to quit doing what i enjoy! I did quit for 18 mths and nothing got better. I decided is I was going to hurt doing bugger all, I may as well hurt doing what i like.

The most difficult part is the muscle wasting, on my legs, excercise is difficult as it hurts and eventually my legs just give up and then I am stuffed. However, i DO make sure my legs get used. It doesn't seem to make any diffference.

Anyhow, I have just about finished putting the collar onto my aran. I have done the back and front, joined the shoulders and am now knitting on the collar. Then it is time to start the sleeves. I will post a pic later today of progress so far.

1 comment:

Jeri said...

Hi Colin:
I was quite moved by your post. As a longtime fibromyalgia sufferer, your seizing up and extreme pain all over sound like fibromyalgia to me ( which I've had for 13 years ). It sucks, especially since I have to slow down on my knitting time!
This week I tried big doses of flax seed oil and Omega 3 fatty acids, and I'm more able to knit without my hands turning into claws. I've tried lots of stuff, but Magnesium and quitting eating wheat have helped most. Anyway, I love your stash, and your puppies, and I know they give you comfort, heat and warmth ( as does wool!). All the best to you.