Sick plus Sock Yarn

I am very grateful for sick days. Not for the part where I feel like garbage or where I'm sneezing so violently that the cats flee the room though Gypsy's adapted now that she's on my lap rather than my chest and I only get an ear twitch.  I'm grateful that I woke up this morning, recognized that between the exhaustion and the congestion and the diseased feeling, and was able to acknowledge that I was probably not going to be any good to anyone in my library.  I could email work and say "Nope, not today. I'll be in and hopefully less infectious tomorrow."  So I did, and then I crawled back under the covers and was fully unconscious before the Philosopher got up to take a shower. 

After sleeping very late and having now added a half dose of sudafed, I'm upright and thinking about moving the cat enough to go get another cup of tea. I might even tackle end weaving on my green sweater. Maybe. I'm not thinking very clearly. I do at least need to run down to the dry cleaners and pick up the Philosopher's suit that he's wearing to a wedding this weekend. Head cold plus wedding ought to be fantastic. 

It's year end and I'm counting only 4-5 projects that I'm hoping to wrap up in the next 14 days before I start misdating everything again.* To that end I took a quick look through my Ravelry stash to start evaluating how much sock yarn I have for 2014 that I'm intending to turn into socks. 

And it's finally happened.  I've stopped binge buying long enough that, if I maintain my current knitting rate of about 1 pair a month, I might come close to running out of sock-designated yarn next year. A quick count through only turned up 17 skeins, not including the ice blue pair currently on the needles. Of those skeins, only 4 are sport weight, and fingering weight on size 1 (2.25mm) needles does take me a little longer, but only 1 set of socks is on size 0 (2.0mm) needles and those are usually my longest marathons.  

If I bought no new sock yarn (unlikely), and got through another 14 pair of socks (this year's current expectation), I'd have 3 skeins left. Now, of course, that doesn't count the yarn that could be used for socks but currently isn't designated for socks, yarn of any weight beyond light fingering/fingering/sport, or the Wollmeise stash. But it does signify a lot of pairs of socks having been knit.  And the possibility one day that there might be some room in the stash bins.  Perhaps.  

And it hasn't been all socks this year.  A quick count reveals: 1 pair mittens, a human sized sweater, a dog sweater, a baby blanket, a scarf, a kitchen rug, most of AudioGirl's slipper socks, but when you balance against 14 pairs of socks, you can see where most of the knitting time went.  

Hmm, I said 4-5 projects up there didn't I? In my defense, all of them are at least 50% done already, so it's not like I'm starting from wool. But I should really go tackle those and also make more tea, especially as the cat has abandoned me temporarily.

Hope you are all feeling well and your Christmas knitting is down to a few ends to weave in... 

*I almost said, writing the wrong year on checks but I'm not sure I wrote any physical checks this year.  How long will it be until that cultural touchpoint is gone for all of us?