I really wanted to be good this year and try to post a little something every day if I could, or at least only let a day or two go empty between posts.
Sigh. That’s what comes of grand intentions, I suppose.
I do at least have a plausible excuse. Mr. Boyfriend came down with some type of flu-thing on New Year’s Day, and I, of course, had to tag along. I’ve given up the past few days to fevers, chills, and general ickiness. But I am very happy to report that it all seems to be behind me at the moment. And so, a post!
I’ve wanted to tell you all about another grand intention I have for the year; it’s an idea I blatantly stole from the Yarn Harlot to create a Self-Imposed Sock Club. It all started with an email from Cookie A, a prominent sock designer who’s starting her own club this year. With membership, you get a different pattern, yarn with which to knit it, and a cookie recipe to bake each month. Awesome, right? So thought I, so much so that the little voice in my head was saying things like “$225 isn’t so much money, I could maybe use my Christmas funds to pay for it,” and “knitting socks and baking! It’s like the club was made just for me!” Then I took a long hard look at my bank account, my yarn stash, and the very realistic financial goals I have set for myself in the next year.
In short, paying for a sock club just wasn’t gonna happen.
Enter the genius of The Self-Imposed Sock Club! You pick yarn from your stash, patterns you’ve been eyeing for ages, and combine the two in nice little prepackaged baggies of gifty goodness! Those who have been with me will remember I tackled the “pair o’ socks a month” goal in 2009 and succeeded, but I did sometimes get frustrated or crunched for time, and I did cheat a couple of times and make non-sock things with sock-weight yarn just to make my quota. With the “club” premise, you’ve already paired yarn and pattern, so the footwork (no pun intended) is already done for you. It takes the wiffling and ho-humming out of the picture. Instead of poring over my stash each month, wondering what to do, I just have to grab a bag!
Genius!
I settled on this marvelous idea a little before Christmas, so I immediately set to work planning upon our return home from Tennessee. I got my patterns together, printed them and stuck them in sheet protectors, sorted through my stash to find the best yarn for each, and set them aside as well. All I really need to do now is baggie them up, and I’ve only stalled on that because I need to purchase said bags. With the amount I shelled out to purchase pattern PDFs I didn’t already own and extra yarn (only one skein, for a pair of fair-isle stockings), I’m only $30 lighter in the pocket.
And I have a year’s worth of socks ahead! I’ve divided it out so six pairs will go in my drawer, and six pairs will be gifted, and I even set aside February to finish a pair of socks I’ve already half-finished, so it’s extreme shortness won’t throw me off. I’m really excited by the thriftiness and order of the whole thing, and I can’t wait to get started.
And now that I’m not feeling like the underside of a Brooklyn bus after a blizzard (topical, see that?), I should be able to get started with January’s allotment. I’ll post a nice picture as soon as I can.
Sickness also means not much happening on the cooking front, but I really want to get some beef-and-barley stew going in the crockpot, and I have a ton of pictures from my caramel apple pie experiment that I’m hoping to post soon as my next big illustrated entry, so look for those soon.
Regarding the site, I fought the good fight with my little Twitter box, but I just couldn’t get the Java to play nice. Unfortunately, I can’t get the native Twitter tab in this theme to play nice either. So if you really want to see my abbreviated ramblings, click the little circles that lead to either FaceBook or Twitter and friend or follow me as occasion demands. I promise that I’m usually very proper, and sometimes even relevant!
And one last thought for today: my boss and I (true to our usual fashion) found some interesting online bits this morning having to do with homelessness. The first (here) has to do with a guy who created “homeless” characters in the game Sims 3, and chronicles their interactions with the rest of the game. It is truly fascinating, moving, and a pretty quick read. The second is the story of Ted Williams (here), a Brooklyn native with a perfect radio voice who got caught up in drug and alcohol abuse, was reduced to begging, and was given an amazing second chance. The third (here) is about Olek, a local artist here in NYC who crochets “cozies” for some truly unique objects as a form of guerilla art. This Christmas she covered the notorious Charging Bull of Wall Street in order to draw attention to the disparity between the excess of the financial system and the very real poverty that lives in New York. All these stories got me thinking about what the new year brings to those less fortunate, and what I could do to help. I hope they’ll do the same for you.