Its always what you can't have...

My stash and I are in a pretty good place with each other. It owns my living room and I try to keep its weight down to around a point where I can still fit in there too.

The past few months its been on a little bit of a diet. Somehow before I moved to Austin it had managed to put on a lot of concealed weight. I didn't realize the bloat was at the level it was until I got here and started unpacking and then kept unpacking and kept unpacking and kept unpacking...

It kicked out my books you know. They're all still in storage somewhere in Kentucky because the yarn wouldn't let them in the car for fear some of it might have to sit in storage instead.

Anyway, once the glut was revealed I sat down with it and we had a little talk about its problems with emotional eating, and how this really wasn't healthy and there were bills that had to take priority sometimes. And it agreed that it would try to cut back some. Maybe not try to drop the weight but at least try and manage it some and we've been in a pretty good place, the two of us, since then.

I've given it some sock yarn and a lace cardigan when its been good for the month, and I even bought it a second wheel to help it burn off some fiber.

I've been keeping busy with my knitting, using up some gems its been hiding in its depths for awhile and I've been pretty happy all around with this arrangement. I think we both have.

My tempest is on the last front panel though and I can see it being finished in the next few weeks. And I've been looking through the stash for my next larger project. There's lots of choices - I have more Wollmeise in red for a lace shrug or cropped cardi, there's some gold cotton I chose for a Whisper cardi awhile back. There's an awful lot of Ella Rae Merino Lace if I want to make a second tempest, and I have that blue zephyr that I want to do an Aeolian shawl with.

The problem is - and this is really hard and contrary for me to say - I don't want to knit another lightweight sweater. I want to knit something sturdy. With cables. Lots of intricate cables. Like the Vivian hoodie or maybe a Twist. Or even the Central Park Hoodie, which I acutally already have the pattern for and have for years now and just never get around to finding appropriate yarn for. I want to knit it out of wool. A soft plushie wool. In a very deep red. Berroco Inca Gold in Vino, or maybe Kashmir Aran in Red or Ember.

And I do not have any yarn like that in the stash.

And I do not have any money to buy the yarn like that to put in the stash.

And all I can think is - you couldn't have started craving this two months ago? When there was money to feed you?