Out On a Limb

To get this out of the way, there’s still open comments on my last post, in which I am comment whoring soliciting input and offering free yarn to a randomly chosen commenter, so you know, go see and comment, please?

I awoke this morning to actual sunlight! Given the weather of late in these parts, this was nothing short of a miracle, so I took advantage of the light to take a bunch of photos. (I know. Try to restrain your excitement.)

I am going ahead with the scary showing-you-my-mess, but not inside the blog itself — if you want to see what a wreck my great room is right now, you can see it on my flickr page, here.

Meanwhile, this would be the yarn, all in one place:

I can’t decide whether this is an excellent method for restraining further yarn purchases until I make some room in the cedar chest, or if it’s just a demonstration of the fact that I’ll have to tap into the empty wooden tool chest that sits on the other side of the couch the cedar chest sits in front of. Elspeth is encouraging me to go ahead and log the stash on Ravelry, she says that it’s terribly freeing to know what you have, etc — I still maintain that I’m not sure I’m ready for my heart to handle knowing how much I’ve spent on all that wool sitting in a cedar chest right now. Admittedly, it’s been spread out over at least five years, but it’s still sort of scary to contemplate.

The cedar chest itself is a pretty cool object. I was given the cedar chest by my maternal grandmother, Nana Acquaviva, and it was made by Nana’s great-grandfather. This chest has been from Pennsylvania, out west across Kansas and further to unknown places, then back to Pennsylvania, and it ended up with Nana at their home in Delaware. Ultimately she gave it to me, which is something for which I’m very grateful, as through a series of unfortunate events the house in Delaware and all its contents are now gone.

I love how scarred and loved the top of the chest is:

Obligatory knitting photo, since I TOTALLY owe you some:

I think, alas, that I must frog this, and at least one other thing on the needles right now. I seem to be experiencing all manner of issues picking up my short row wraps for Lizard Ridge and I’m still not doing well after trying this same colorway several times already. So tonight I’ll go investigate online about picking up short row wraps and see whether I can do justice to the current Kureyon collection:

I think chances of me having documentation of what colorways I used for this afghan are fairly slim.

I have more to show, but will see if I can parse it out over the week so I actually have ~gasp~ some updates! Until then, go comment so I can give you stuff! Also, happy February! Go check out Anna Maria Horner’s blog for a lovely free wallpaper of a heart card made of vintage buttons. So very lovely. (Both the card and Anna Maria herself, in fact.)