I've been busy, honest

Since I last posted I've made, um, five hats? a doll & a neckwarmer thingie. No pictures partly because some of the things are pressies, partly because I've mislaid the camera. Now I know it's on the table but that poor object is currently heavily laden with patterns, sewing stuff, roleplaying books & wargame minatures.

The two crochet hooks I bought from ebay arrived yesterday. I was so excited, it's sad really. One is an Inox 6mm, with a metal hook end & a plastic handle. It's good to work with, much better than the plastic 6mm I've had for donkeys & only use when I can't avoid it. The other hook is a light metal 8mm hook by a company called Apple. I was worried about the weight involved but it doesn't feel much heavier than the icky plastic one and is a dream to crochet with. I've already used to make two hats. With this hook and two strands of yarn, I can whistle through a hat in about ninety minutes while watching telly.

Last Saturday two friends visited me & brought me so much stuff that I was dreamy for days. There was a large amount of wool, dozens of knitting needles & crochet hooks, patterns (many vintage magazine pull-outs), sewing & dressmaking supplies and just assorted crafty stuff. David didn't know whether to be sniffy about all the extra wool & patterns or amused by the way I kept giggling whenever I remembered all the treasure which had taken over my living room. They had cleared out a house belonging to a lifelong hoarder.

We joke about SABLE (stash already beyond life expectancy) & PABLE but this kinda of struck me as so sad. I've been thinking about it and while I'm definitely PABLE I am not SABLE. I use (during an average week) at least 100g of yarn. That's 5200g per year or 52,000g over ten years. I don't have anywhere near that much, despite what David tells people. Until A & F brought me treasure, my stash had been reducing, in that I had been using more wool than I had been buying.

Admittedly, realising that my stash was shrinking did send me into a bit of a panic, leading to hours of ebay browsing & such like, before I calmed down. After all, I'm visiting my parents over the festive season which means my knitting & crochet will be funded by my mother's stash. I usually take a couple or three balls with me but mostly I play with my mother's wool.

I have to start deciding what knitting I'm taking with me. Usually I take a selection of patterns, my crochet hooks & some short circs, along with any yarn already allocated to a pattern. I have to crochet during the journey - it stops my anxiety going into overdrive because I'm so far away from safe places. I also take any books that I think Mum will be interested in, as long as they're not too heavy. I try to be prepared for different moods, so I have a project to suit whatever frame of mind I'm in. Yes, Mum does have patterns but that is not the point. Her patterns are different from mine. It's awful being in the mood to make a certain thing but its pattern is a hundred miles away. I get very frustrated when that happens. I will have to make sure I have a couple of sudoku books with me as well. Last time I visited I finished all my puzzles only to discover that the local shop didn't stock any puzzle books. Imagine having to take a two hour round trip by bus just to get a sudoku book!

With it being the last weekend before Christmas, I'm wondering if the wool shop in town will be open tomorrow. I must get some black wool ASAP. I need to crochet a scarf by Wednesday. The yarn I was going to use turned to be ... less than suitable, shall we say? Its lumps & my crochet speed turned out to be incompatible and I became rapidly scunnered with the thing.

Now, the current big decision - am I going to crochet or am I going to do sudoku puzzles in bed tonight? The nightlife of a poor sleeper can be so exciting.