A GLUTTON FOR PUNISHMENT, SELF-CONGRATULATIONS, AND OBSESSION

FIRST THE SELF-CONGRATULATIONS:

Done!  I am freaking done with these hellish socks!  I am thrilled beyond belief.  I have blogged about them before; at that point, I thought I had been working on them for about a year.  Which is ridiculously long...so as you can guess, I was mostly NOT working on them at all.  But I pulled them out a while back, dug in my heels (appropriate for working on socks), started in again, stuck it out, and now I am done...congratulations to me!  Normally, if I'm working slowly and taking breaks on a pair of socks, they might take me about 6 weeks.  But not these. 

NOW THE GLUTTON FOR PUNISHMENT BIT:

As it turns out, I was wrong about having worked on them for a year.  I went back and thought more carefully about when I would have begun...and reached the conclusion that it has been closer to 3 YEARS.  Seriously!  I have never, ever spent that amount of time on any project, and this is a testament to how much I hated working with this yarn.

Please understand that I have made dozens of socks with no problem at all.  But for some reason, the yarn for this pair made the work very tricky and was big-time drudgery all the way.  I cannot count the number of times I ripped out several inches and re-knit them.  Many people told me to just throw them out, but dammit, I am stubborn and very persistent and was determined not to let the yarn get the best of me.  And so they are done.  Done!!!!!

I only wish I knew what the yarn was, so that I could avoid ever buying it again.  It looks like regular sock yarn, but isn't.  Long ago I made a pair of red socks that had yarn that acted the same way; I also slogged my way through those and it took at least 3 times as long as it should have.

I am done with nasty weird sock yarn.  The next time I run across yarn that acts this way, I will indeed throw it out, having proved I could complete 2 projects with it.  Nasty stuff.

NOW THE PART ABOUT OBSESSIONS:

And speaking of yarn, how does this look?  Everything you see here is yarn.  Yarn in a bag.  Yarn in the boxes.

My studio-mate K and I did a major yarn buy at an unheard-of cheap price for over 100 pounds of highest-quality rug yarn.  I do not imagine I will ever have to buy rug yarn again.  I do imagine I will spend quite a bit of time dyeing my share of this yarn.  Good thing K just got back from her 4-day dye workshop (see the previous post).  Cannot wait to begin playing with color and then punch-hooking my next rug.