I haven't blogged in quite a while, but not have I crafted either, and that's a bit of a sad thing. But I really feel like the March Hare and you may even hear me scream "I'm late, I'm late!" And this is due to an overly large amount of stress. And usually I knit when I'm stressed, but I guess there is too much stress and not enough time to actually get anything done.

What's causing all of this stress, you may ask? Well I'll tell you! I'm getting married in June and have about a billion and 2 things that needs to be done, checked, double checked and confirmed finished. I've got invitations to finish up and a seating chart to go about and other wedding-y stuff. There's also the move. Ji and I are moving at the beginning of April and that means packing is involved BUT some things can't be finished until after the wedding stuff because we might need it. This makes the packing job extremely complicated and a pain in the arse. But there are some upsides to all this packing and moving.

Because we're moving into a slightly smaller place (which we don't mind since the layout is better and we don't and can't use all the space in this house) that we need to downgrade a bit on the stuff. It's kind of nice to throw out the crappy containers we got when we first moved in and barely stayed closed, or the papers we won't need as we've changed our majors and other random stuff like that. And I know you must be thinking, "but what does this have to do with crafting?" and you must have already thought "oh no, not the yarn!" Yes, yes the yarn.

At the beginning of the year, Ji said I wasn't allowed to buy anymore yarn until after the wedding (saving for rings and all that) At first I was mortified. How was I supposed to go almost six months without buying any more yarn!  I thought it was impossible, but then I remembered that our friend Gord had given me a KnitPicks gift card and that for Christmas, Ji has given me an IOU for any amount of yarn I needed to make a sweater. (This IOU is because he's such a sweetheart and felt bad that my first sweater was out of terrible Bernat Alpaca yarn, that I bought when I was still young and foolish about fiber and other knitting goodness, and that the yarn was almost too itchy for me to knit with never mind wear.) So I decided that I would accept his challenge.

About half way through January I decided I had to use my coveted gift card to buy some sock yarn for my friend Sierra who is making my bridal party jewellery in exchange for socks and a hooded scarf. So I bought 2 balls of a grey Stroll Tonal called Thunderhead, 1 ball of Gypsy (she only wanted about 3" worth of red in her socks so I figured, yay! a pair of red socks for me) and a ball of Nevermore for me because it was on sale and was being discontinued and always wanted to try it. Plus, I can never shop at KnitPicks without getting myself some sock yarn as well. When the yarn finally got here I wound it into center pull balls and put them all into ziplocks so they'd be safe and then started the first sock. I got about 4" finished of a toe up sock when it happened. I got so busy with school and wedding planning that I didn't have the tie or energy to knit so I couldn't.

By now you're probably confused as to how all this related to knitting or moving or even how this post relates at all to housekeeping. Well I decided that since my new craft room is going to be a lot smaller than this one, that I had to gift some of my yarn away. I went thorough my stash and decided I was more into knitting garments and snuggly things and acrylic just wouldn't do for that sort of thing. So I got a garbage bag (the only thing big enough to hold all that yarn) and filled it with almost all of my acrylic yarn. I kept a few colours for myself that I knew I might use for a kid's item but now my stash looks so bare and empty. But that's ok because my stash of sock yarn was getting too big to live in the living room any longer and needed to start moving upstairs eventually. And now I have room to rebuild my stash with yarn I actually want to have and will knit with. It was actually quite liberating.

Back to packing up my craft room for me. Hopefully it all fits into the new place!