Who Says

that you can't teach an old dog new tricks?

Yesterday, I learned this new cast on:





It took me several tries, and when I finally got it, I was still as clumsy as I was the first time. It involves Magic Loop techniques, which I also had to learn a little of, but I did it, and now I have this:

which is the beginning of a pinwheel blanket using up at least some of my sock yarn leftovers.

Ah, yes.  Peterson's book.  We had a Cooper's hawk at our pond yesterday.
Don't eat our fish!!!

Baxter promises not to touch any of this yarn or my blanket or my knitting needles so that I can leave this project out and pick it up for a few stitches or rounds when I feel like it. No completion date on the horizon.  

This old dog rocks the circular cast on!

Stash Hoarder? Not Me.

I do not have very much stash. (See below) For those non-knitters out there, "stash" is yarn you have in storage for projects you may not even have come up with yet. This is an embarrassing amount of stash, not because there is so much, but because there is so little. Most self-respecting knitters have lots and lots of stash, so much stash that they hide it throughout their homes---under beds, in closets, in basements and attics, and other places they think their significant others will never see it.
Mine all fits in ONE container:
One 13" by 21" by 7" container. My knitter friends would laugh at the idea that I even consider such a small amount of yarn to be stash.

My sock stash:

My sock stash will eventually make nine pairs of socks. Again, my knitter friends would laugh.

There are people who are hoarders. I am not one of them. When I see "professional organizers" on HGTV, I hear them say that anything you haven't used in one/two years, get rid of. Some members of my family claim that my philosophy is that if I haven't used it in a day or two, I want to get rid of it. NOT TRUE... After older daughter was married, my s-i-l told her that he thought I was trying to get rid of everything in my house, box by box, by shipping it to their house. Again, NOT TRUE. Isn't there some sort of statute of limitations on how long adult children can store stuff at their parents' home?

Older granddaughter is now reading Nancy Drew books and I found a lot of them this weekend in my basement. They belong to my younger daughter, who lives in LA, and I left her a phone message asking if I could ship them off to older granddaughter. Before she could even call back, I had the books all boxed up and labeled to be mailed. When she did call back, she warned me that the Nancy Drew books she had were for middle-school or high-school readers, not for almost-eight-year olds. Too late! They will go to the Post Office today, and then my older daughter can figure out what to do with them.

Box by box by box by box.....