So step 1 of the Organize My Dang Knitting Already Plan turned out to involve going through my knitting bags and realizing that the reason things weren't getting done was because it was a rat's nest. A lot of that has to do with our aborted house-moving in April, where lots of things got thrown into boxes, and then put back in roughly but not exactly the same order. So my very good intentions of restarting the lace kneesocks didn't work out because I couldn't find my pattern notes. Things like that.

In the process of sorting, I found some silk singles, completely spun but not yet plied. Even though it's not even something I remembered to put on the list, I finished it:

Lovely, lovely stuff. 2-ply, one ounce, about 215 yards. Maybe a doily? I haven't done one of those in a while.

Then I found a half-full spindle with some gorgeous alpaca/wool/silk blend on it (the final destiny of this fiber is as singles, so I wasn't even trading one set of singles for another!) Finished off that spindle-full, so that I could put the fiber and spindle bag away neatly. Then I found yet ANOTHER small pile of singles to be plied for my spinning guild, which I dispatched quickly.

When I finally got all the yarn, fiber, and fabric where it was supposed to be and stopped finding half-done projects, the end result was a craft space that is no longer any kind of disaster area. All spindles empty. One half-full bobbin on the wheel. All knitting needles in a place I can actually find them quickly. Phew.

And then, well. And then I went to Susan's open house on Saturday and came home with ridiculous amounts of yarn and fiber. The haul includes some sock fiber that is positively screaming about the injustice of not being made into another pair of kneesocks right this instant. There's a skein of dyed-by-me fingering weight yarn that isn't thrilling me--I'm too picky to enjoy surprises, which is what a first-time-dyeing experiment is guaranteed to be. (This is why I don't join yarn or fiber clubs.) Lastly, I got some yarn for the test-knitting project I mentioned in the previous entry, which is currently still at the swatching stage.

Steps forward and back, and all that. At least it's organized and prioritized.

Filly just wrote a post containing a full list of all her WIPs, and it got right under my skin, because arrrgggh, I have so many partly-done projects (and two-three more "need to do soon" projects) that it's making me crazy. I think I need to pick a week sometime this summer where I skip out on all evening activities including computer time (which is such a waste of brain cells, really), get the couch all comfy, get some DVDs and books on tape, and just knit and spin all week. It's not like that would be any kind of hardship--oh, no! I'm going to spend lots of time doing a thing I totally enjoy! And then at the end, hopefully, I'd have made a lot of progress and be able to cast on for something new. :) It'd be interesting to see how much I got done!

Let's see, what's in progress right now?

1) The main project is this very nice sweater, which is not at all like anything I normally wear except that I love it to pieces. I'm making modifications galore--different stitch pattern, a bit of shaping so that the back is lower, fingering weight hemp instead of sportweight alpaca and according changes in numbers. This was what I worked on in Japan, because most of it is just straight up and down easy lace pattern. I didn't get a whole lot done on the trip because looking out the window of the trains was much more entertaining, but at this point I've knit from one front all the way to mid-back, and have just started working on the second front piece. The fronts are considerably longer than your typical cardigan, so I'm more than half done, certainly. This is perfectly good bus knitting, so I'm content with the slow steady progress it's making.

2)Lacy Cables Knee Socks, with handspun superwash/bamboo blend:

These are a fair ways along, though I need to figure out if I messed up the increases along the calf. I was working on these before the Japan trip but didn't want to bring them with. I'm following the pattern pretty closely with some slight gauge modifications, so there's not much thinking to do If I do a WIP-a-palooza, these will probably be worked on first.

3)Snowflake Mittens: I am 200% in love with the yarn, and still figuring out the pattern. I was working on these a lot last fall and just faded because the picture in my head wasn't lining up with the fabric after ripping 2-3 times. These would go fast if only I could figure out what I was doing.

4) Socks Of Fail: Birch Leaf socks from A Gathering of Lace. Technically a finished object, except that one sock has 12 repeats of the leaf pattern, and fits beautifully, while the other has 11 repeats of the leaf pattern and doesn't. Sounds easy, except that ripping back to the appropriate spot involves knitting most of the sock again. Tossed aside in frustration long before I even defended. I love the socks though so I should really just suck it up already. This would be another good one for targeted WIP-icide.

5) Long-term shawl design: Thinking about this one makes me grumpy because it's such a huge project and I'll never ever finish it. I think it's time to move it out of the knitting bag into the "put on hold indefinitely" box.

And then the ones that I haven't even started yet but feel the need to finish anyways:

6) Fishy Hat Redux: I want to post the pattern for this guy. I want to reknit it as it's been a while since I made it. I have someone who is willing to trade the hat for pictures of their child wearing the hat (so that I have better pictures to go with the pattern). I just need to knit the darned thing (and also email them back about the pictures). Shouldn't take too long once I get started; I took good notes and the pattern is mostly written/charted.

7) More shawls: I have two in-progress spinning projects with half-planned shawls connected to them. I'm less up-in-arms about spinning in progress, but it'd still be nice to make some progress on these.

8) Test Knitting Project: The pattern's not even written yet, but I've agreed to knit it by September and it's a fairly big project, so it'll get bumped up in priority soon. The advantage to going WIP-hunting sooner is that I could finish my own projects and have a nice empty knitting bag.

9) Sweater Swatch: Oh man, this thing is so great where it is that I should just bind it off, then hang it on the wall to dream about knitting it this winter. There's so little involved that I could probably finish it tonight, but it is still sitting on the needles.

Nine projects in the pile. This is ridiculous for someone who prefers to have less than three going. So, that's it, then. Sometime very soon, I'm going to go offline for a week and spend the whole time WIP-hunting, including lunch breaks. I could probably get 3 or 4 of these finished during that time. Possibly short updates on progress will be involved.

It is likely that you will find the following to be a very Important and Informative website.

Who Pooped?

(Note: Embedded sounds make this NSFW until you TURN OFF YOUR SPEAKERS. On the other hand, it's perfectly safe for young children unless they're not supposed to giggle.

There are lots of things I want to say about the trip, but it's still pretty disorganized in my head--pretty much every single moment of every single day involved dealing with things outside my experience, how do you condense that down? I bought a journal our first day there and I have pages and pages of doodles and repetition and streams of consciousness. I feel like it needs to digest a bit more.

In the meantime, I have been writing about the trip in tiny increments, on J's Flickr stream as he adds new pictures. (Note: A lot of those pictures are mine too, but he's got the Pro account so we're putting them all up over there. At some point we'll get more organized about noting who took what.) We've been home for over a week and he's only on day 5 of the trip, but, well. We took a lot of pictures. I've been getting bits and pieces of what I want to say out over there, plus, there's lots of cool pictures of Tokyo, and the first few cool pictures of Kyoto. So if you're interested in a somewhat piecemeal but chronological retelling, Try over there.