I’ve spent a lot of time and energy on knitting since starting a PhD program (please don’t ask me to talk about why yet – I have spent enough time on that with both my advisor and my therapist, often with tears). Because I knit quickly, there is absolutely no way on earth I could find a place to store all of my finished objects. Let’s be honest, I hardly have enough space to store all my WIPs! I give most of my knitted things—both mittens and sweaters—to others. Sometimes, these things are gifts, and sometimes I work on commission.

After knitting a bunch of sweaters in yarn from my stash for my close friends, whenever friends and acquaintances would ask me if I worked on commission, I’d say, ‘sure. You buy the yarn.’ That was a good tactic, because I was going to knit anyway, and it can be a pretty expensive hobby. But the list got pretty long. I made a lot of things for other people. And I still did a lot of gift knitting for my family, which I will never stop doing.

The thing about knitters, though, is that we end up buying a lot of really nice yarn. Sometimes we save up money and go to a fiber festival, sometimes we see a beautiful pattern and think, “I’ve just GOT to make that,” and sometimes we’re just at a yarn store and something calls to us, and it’s impossible to go home without it. (This has happened to me SO many times.) So, as you might imagine, someone like me who is truly obsessed with beautiful color and fiber spends a lot of time collecting beautiful yarn. I will never, ever stop that. But I now have so many commissions and friend sweaters as WIPs or in my immediate queue that the other day it occurred to me that I had absolutely no idea when I was going to make even the slightest dent in all this stunning yarn.

So, I decided, it’s time to take a pause from knitting for others. Not completely, because I still enjoy working on small projects like mittens for other people, but for a hot minute, I’m going to spend, like, seventy percent of my knitting time knitting for me. After, of course, I finish several sweaters and other things that have due dates! I fit my Meyers-Briggs type—INFJ—to a tee and am often prey to clickbait that say things like “what leads you to burnout based on your MBTI.” (I think of it as a kind of educated horoscope – I get the same guilty pleasure from it.) Anyway, apparently when you are burnt out as an INFJ, according to a particular sketchy website, you are supposed to focus on doing things for yourself, and not always for others. (I get caught up in doing things for others, often at my own literal expense. Like not asking my roommates to pay me for groceries when I cook dinner. It’s bad. I’m trying to be less passive-aggressive.)

So, on a happier note, here are some of the things I’ve got in the queue. I often change my mind before I’ve cast something on, like, I’ll get yarn for a particular project and then find a better pattern for it before I start working on it, so these are not final, of course, but I’ve got a lot of ideas up there, and a lot of beautiful yarn to execute them.

On my needles already: the Magnolia sweater. Holding a strand of mohair-silk with a laceweight or fingering-weight yarn is REALLY hot right now, and I have fully jumped on the bandwagon. First of all, mohair-silk is useful to pair with a singles yarn because it prevents the wool from pilling, which is a huge problem with single-ply merino (and lots of wool in general). Second, it creates the actual softest fabric on earth. Wearing a mohair-merino sweater feels like being hugged by a fluffy, warm cloud. Third, it works up fast, because you can use a loose gauge. (But beware! This also means it’s easier to snag on things. Be careful with these garments.) I’ve knit several patterns in this combination of fibers, like Love Note and Flax (hacked), and have plans to knit more for other people in the future, but when I saw Magnolia, I had to have that one. I had three skeins of Tosh Merino Light in “Love or Lust,” which I snagged for 25% off over Labor Day weekend just before Amy sold the company and I picked up a bunch of inexpensive balls of mohair-silk in Valley Yarns Southampton. This fiber can be quite expensive, so I usually dye my own, but it was winter, so I had to figure something else out. I like the pairing and the fabric is so beautiful!

I picked up three skeins of Skein Queen Flockly (70% BFL, 20% silk, 20% cashmere) as a birthday gift to myself this past November, when I read somewhere that ‘everyone needs a sweater with a little cashmere in it.’ I have several 100% cashmere sweaters, but none that I’ve ever knit myself, so this was special. I planned initially to make some kind of colorwork yoke sweater at a tight gauge with it, but then I saw Hay in Laine 3 and absolutely lost my mind, so it’s got to be that. I swatched recently and am totally in love with the flecks. I’m going to buy a long tutu to style it with. I’m young, I should be wearing totally outlandish things like tutus more often!

This intense cobalt yarn is a blend of 60% mohair and 40% merino and it’s DK weight. It’s from Yellow Dog Farm in South Hero, Vermont, about a half-hour from my hometown, Burlington. When I was home over winter break, I saw four skeins of this at my lovely LYS (Must Love Yarn, in Shelburne) and could not leave the store without it. The Midcoast Sweater pictured at the top of this page was made in their Island Gossamer, which is a fingering weight yarn estimated at 400 yards per skein, but it was a bit finer than that, and actually came out to 600 yards per skein – I needed only two to make this sweater! I figure four is enough to make Apricite, from Laine 7. (Can you tell I really like the Laine sweaters?) It’s supposed to be knit in one strand of DK held with one strand of mohair-silk, but there’s so much mohair in this yarn that I don’t think it will help to add more of a halo.

This sweater quantity of Ulysse from De Rerum Natura was one of the fruits of my expedition to Espace Tricot, which you can read about in a previous post, in Montreal. (I’m going there this weekend – but I can’t buy too much!) They had a blocked sample of a sweater knit in this yarn, and it was so soft I couldn’t resist. I’m planning to make this sweater, called Nook, which is good for showing off the wonderful stitch definition with the sleeve cables, but also simple enough or everyday wear.

This is by no means all of the yarn I have saved up in my stash for myself, but I have to stop this post somewhere, so I’ll end here: the other SQ I got at Espace Tricot is the Biches et Bûches le petit lambswool. I purchased five skeins of the very light blue and one of the dark turquoise, not sure what I would use it for. I think I’d like to make Poet, from Laine 6, which is a pretty intense lace pattern, but I’m up for the challenge. Or, I will be, at some point soon! I can’t resist a good light blue (it was hard not to buy the Ulysse in Ciel, which is their lovely version, but I wanted something different), and this was just too beautiful to pass up. Your well wishes are appreciated for my patience with all this lace! I do love working lace, but it can be a bear (and it often seems so endless).

Any other yarns I absolutely must try? I’ve been saving up my commission money to get some nice things at the DFW fiber festival in April – my best friend (who also knits) lives in Dallas, so it seemed like a perfect opportunity to visit! I can’t wait to start working on all these beautiful things.