The Rules of the Wall of Shame

As with this blog, I've come to the realization that in order for me to actually go through the wall of shame and complete it, I must give myself guidelines. Therefore, the rules.

1. I am not allowed to buy yarn for any new project until everything on the wall of shame is completed or frogged. The exception to this is yarn for socks for my Grandpa. I can buy yarn if it is to finish a wall of shame project, because otherwise it would be redundant.

2. I am only allowed to work on one WoS project during the week. I must choose the project, put it in my bag, and that is it! I am not allowed to hopscotch around the projects because then I'll fall back into my usual trap and nothing will get done. Once a WoS project is off the needles (doesn't need to be blocked), I can then go to the pile and grab another one.

3. In addition to the WoS project, I am allowed to have 2 other projects on the go, the first is a simple project that doesn't require a pattern, because sometimes my laptop's dead, or I just can't focus on a difficult pattern. Having a pair of vanilla, or close to vanilla, socks on the needles will allow me to continue to knit no matte the circumstances. I'm also allowed to work on a single cross stitch pattern. I'm not going to have a million UFO's for cross stitch (yet). So I have to keep it to small, fun designs.

4. On the weekends I'm allowed to pick up this monstrosity and add to its bulk.

Peari decided to help me show off it's size.

This is a sock yarn blanket based off of Shelly Kang's blankie. It's going to be big enough to fit on my queen sized bed. It's currently at the proper width, but needs a lot more squares to reach it's proper height. This will take me a while, but is rather too bulky to take with me everywhere. So I'm going to work on it on Fridays at knit club, and then possibly on the weekends at home, if I'm at home. I'll do Monday blankie updates I think.

This past weekend I only added about 3 small squares, but I was teaching someone to knit, and I was only home for a couple of hours in the morning on Saturday and Sunday each, so cut me a little slack.

The current WoS project is this difficult to see pile of ribbing.

This started life as a baby blanket for a boy. I originally thought that the yarn was gold with lovely maroons and burgundies, but when I brought it out into real light I realized it was rather more pink and violet than what I thought, so not so good for a young lad. However, I had been smart enough to make it fairly wide, and folding it in half allowed it to become a sweater for me! I'm almost done with the body, then it's just a matter of knitting up the sleeves, and once again I'm a bit worries about the amount of yarn I have.

Are you noticing a theme?

My cross stitch project is the penguin card from The World of Cross Stitch magazine.

I started with the white and sand colours. I learned a while ago (the hard way) that when doing small projects like this, it's often a good idea to start with the lightest colours, or your whites get all muddled by the other colours. Right now it's fairly boring, but with luck I can get some more colour into it so the next time I show you it will be pretty.

So that's that, hopefully I can continue the FO brigade of the WoS and soon have some pretty stash acquisitions to show you.

The future wall of shame

Looks like I'm going to be creating a wall of shame.

I spent 45 minutes last night going through every room in the house to grab anything yarny (be it actual yarn, UFO's, or yarny tools like needles and such) and got it to one central location. After I'd done that, the back part of my living room looked like this.

Which to some knitters will look like a baby stash as they go "how cute". The fact of the matter is, that I'm pretty sure I only have about 75-80% of the stash here, and this doesn't count my fabric and stuff. 

This is also only half of what I used to have, because I decided to get rid of all the acrylic I knew I wasn't going to touch. I did a yarny trade with a friend's Nana. She got my acrylic for blankets, and I got her rug hooking stuff, which is in the baskets by the window.

So, what my plan is, is to go through this pile of yarny goodness and separate and photograph any and all UFO's that are hidden within. I will then put them up on a wall of shame. The rules are as follows:

In order for me to be allowed to get new yarn for a new project (the only exception being socks for my Grandfather), I must have everything on the Wall of Shame either finished, or frogged. 

I think this is a fair challenge and that it's something I can stick to. I'm not going to say I can't cast on anything new, I can do new projects from stash yarn, and they won't end up on the wall of shame, so long as they are finished in a timely manner.

This is incentive enough, I believe, to get these projects finished or frogged, because my Queue on Ravelry continues to grow, and I just don't seem to have anything suitable for any of the patterns!