The ??? Project

Yesterday the Maternal Unit and I went to see Julie & Julia. It was really a delight. Meryl Streep was Julia. (And in case you had any lingering doubt, there is no original content on this blog since Ida has already reviewed the film here.)

For most folks, this movie will awaken a desire to learn to cook (or perfect their already considerable skill.) Some people will walk out of the theater feeling a little like Julie Powell.

"What have I done? "
"How many things have I finished?"
"Am I where I want to be?"
"Am I even moving in the right direction?"*

(Ok, maybe no one walked out feeling this way.)

I kept thinking to myself last night "Is there a knitting equivalent to the Julie/Julia Project?" I wanted to do something like that, but with knitting.

Elizabeth Zimmerman's Knitter's Almanac immediately comes to mind, but that's been done. One could substitute any number of EZ's books, but if truth be told, even I couldn't take that much garter stitch.

I guess you could work your way through every single stitch pattern in Barbara Walker's A Treasury of Knitting Patterns (Including the second one.) Unfortunately, the earth would collapse in on itself under the weight of all the dishcloths. And I am lazy. Some of those stitch patterns include shudder colorwork! I entertained that idea for about 5 minutes (and that is a very generous estimation.)

I kept coming back to lazy. What sort of year-long project could I copy cat with minimal effort?

Then it hit me.

Stashbusting. I've already put myself on a yarn diet. Could I go an entire year without buying yarn, patterns, magazines or books?

Oh all right! I know it's boring as hell and I'll never get a book deal out of it (Big yarn industry will squelch it, you know) but I'm gonna do it.

I'll start by showing you the stash. Originally, I planned to pull out all the tubs and bins, drag them to the patio and taking on picture so you could appreciate the sheer monumental size of it. That was too much effort. It's hot, I'm still in jammies...too many extenuating circumstances (like, oh, being lazy.) In the end, I just went around the house taking pictures of the stash.

So here it is (minus one tall laundry hamper I forgot about):


(All the mess is there for scale. In my defense, the public areas of my house are very neat and tidy.)

And now that I look at it, it really doesn't seem like such a physical Goliath. Believe me, though, it is a psychological Goliath. I have so much yarn bought on a whim (Fun Fur, really?), unfulfilled projects (I can't even remember what I bought some of the yarns for) and more "It's on sale I'll buy it all and figure it out later" yarn than I care to admit (which I think I just did.)

I do hope you will join me for this folly project. In true lazy fashion I have set my start date as July 18 since I don't want to change the code on the blog (and to bolster my ego...I'm 21 days into the project only 344 more days to go!)

*As I write it occurs to me that perhaps I over analyzed the movie.