Preparing for Yarn Disasters

This is probably something I should have posted before the hurricane, but there were a few other things I was a little concerned about. I live in a basement apartment, and it was entirely possible during the storm that we would get a little to a lot of flooding. I also knew there would a LOT of time spent with my boyfriend's family and that knitting might prevent me from harming any of them. Here's what I did to prepare:

When I moved to this apartment, I was worried about what could happen to my yarn, and I needed an easy way to transport it as well. I put it all in clear plastic bins from The Container Store. Amusingly, these boxes were called Sweater Boxes (and they stack on top of each other!). The plastic proved to be a good move, as there were a few boxes on the floor that ended up getting wet, but the yarn inside them is totally fine.

I have a box of pretty yarn that I usually keep on the floor next to the TV. It's in a fabric box because the fabric box is pretty, and it's open. I simply moved this onto a TV table, which kept it above the water and fine.

You may have seen my blog Yarn365. I love taking photos for artistic reasons. However, one of the things I did before I moved last year was take photos of all the yarn I had and document which box it was in. I wanted to make sure that when I got to the new place, I knew that I had all my yarn. This proved to be useful in that, if anything bad did happened to my yarn, I had proof of my collection and how much it was worth in case I needed to file an insurance claim.

I was also worried about being bored, so figuring out what my next pattern would be was instrumental. The project for my brother's wedding is too warm to work on should the power go out and the AC fail. I was going to finish a shawl, but I was running out of yarn and I lost the bead needle I needed to string the beads onto a new ball. If I finished the sock I was working on, that'd be bad. So I started swatching. I settled on knitting a Cosy V Neck Pullover (Ravlink) from Fitted Knits: 25 Designs for the Fashionable Knitter (AMZ Link). It's top down and I finished the V-neck part and was ready to join for the round when I realized that I'd omitted the neckline shaping. So I ripped it all out Sunday night.

However, my issues with the pattern were all mental. I could read the pattern, despite the fact that the lights were out and our transformer exploded because I had a Neck Light. My SNB went in on this. I think we got something like 20 lights alltogether so we got them cheaply. It was pretty awesome to be able to continue to knit despite the dark.

Overall, we weathered through ok. We had a transformer explode on our block and we had to leave our house because of a possible gas leak whose origin they still don't quite know. But everyone here was safe, and I hope you were too.

(photo: Decadent Fibers Creme Brulee from Rhinebeck last year, the yarn of my hurricane project)

Is all knitting so touchy feely?

I was poking around Amazon this afternoon and found the book Knit in Comfort. I started thinking to myself: why do I see so many novels about women finding themselves through knitting? I thought, why don't I write the less dramatic book about a woman finding her friends through knitting. Then I realized what I was saying.

I'm that woman.

I moved to the city, started reading all the time and realized I was only living in my head. To get out of my head, I taught myself how to knit, and I started finding knitting groups to be social. I met friends, awesome friends that I've had for a while now. I had some awesome experiences (remember the yarn bus, the first Rhinebeck experience, and moving the stash to Stan's?).

Looks like knitting is a life changer after all. Even if it isn't as touchy feely as all those novels make it seem.

I wonder if a non-touchy feely knitting life changing book would sell. Probably not. I'll bet a book that describes the intersection of dating and knitting would be hilarious and sell quite well though. Call it "When to Flash Your Stash."