The pretty bits.

This is a week of finishing things.  Oscilloscope by Kate Gagnon Osborne,

and another way to wear it.

I've very pleased with this shawl/scarf.  Perfection would have been if I had 4 skeins, but I had only 3.  I knit one skein and weighed the second, and knit to eactly half the skein by weight and then began the decreases with the intention to knit till the yarn was gone or the pattern was done, which ever came first. 

As I went on, I worried.  I worried a lot about midway through the third ball.  In fact I worried so much that I contemplated sitting and knitting till it was done, no matter how late that might be, just so I wouldn't have to worry anymore about it.  Thankfully the end of the pattern came first and all I have left is the smallest bit.

The yarn is Manos del Uruguay Silk Blend. Its warm and cozy and is going to be wonderful to wrap around my head and shoulders on windy spring days.     

I'm not sure how other knitters deal with their bits and pieces, but I always think them as classes of yarns bits and recently divided them up into separate boxes.  

There is the sock box, for socks bits.  Eventually or maybe sooner, I will knit some Monstersocks.  A lady in one of my knit groups is doing a bunch of these and I have been inspired.   

There is the ordinary bits box.  They are bits of yarn from sweaters, from mitts, from scarves, from mucking about knitting. There isn't really enough to do anything with, but some day I might need just a bit of colour for a flower, or a stripe in something.  Who knows?  There might be monster mittens from it some day.

Then there is the bits of beautiful things box.  

There is a beautiful ball of cashmere in here and the most beautiful bits of sock yarn I ever saw, and the bits left over from the shawl I knit in Kiev, bits from my sweet Olya's bridal shawl, and way in the top right hand corner, a bit of my very first handspun.  There is a lot of silk in here.  Silk alpaca, silk mohair, silk wool, Silk Garden, just bits of lovely things.  I am not sure what I am going to do with these but sometimes I wonder if they should just be wound into small balls and put into a large glass jar, to be pulled out and looked at occasionally, like a special a box trinkets, or an old photo album.  They are my fond memories of knitting.   

The bit of yellow Manos will go into the special bits box.  I will keep it as a reminder that worrying didn't do me any good, that I have to learn to trust the numbers, that I have to learn to just let it go and let it be.  

I have a special jar, a big clear glass cookie jar, that is being used for new stash yarns (there is some wonderful stuff in it) but really, it might serve me better to show off the pretty little things, the bits and pieces of my knitting history to remind me of how far I have come in the land of knitting and how far I have yet to go.

A jar of pretty things?  Yes I think so.