I should reach the heel flap of the 2^nd outré sock today.

Since it now looks reasonably certain that I’ll finish it altogether sometime next week, and since next week is Woolly Hat Week (link yesterday), I think the die is cast. I scrambled about in the stash a bit yesterday – the vast majority of it, by now, is Shetland jumper weight or sock weight, and the few heavier yarns tend to be a bit girly.

I think I’ve settled on this Debbie Bliss Maya. Will it do? Not too garish? Or I could hold two strands of sock yarn together.

As always, a few moments with the stash plunge me into the deepest gloom. You people keep making brilliant suggestions, and I keep not doing anything about them. Since my year of Not Buying Yarn, November ’09-November ’10, I’ve been good about not augmenting stash but much less good at nibbling at it.

My position at the moment is not too bad, at least if I’m spared for the rest of Twenty Twelve. The two madelinetosh projects, for which the yarn is already on the premises; three pairs of socks after the current ones; then we’re back to square one. Do-able. But that still leaves the great irreducible stash, and Scotland might win tomorrow necessitating the purchase of yarn for the Twenty Twelve Calcutta Cup sweater, and goodness knows what will be prescribed for the Games.

I had hoped to get started on a big Koigu project this year, but it’s receding.

So a seaman’s hat will at least be a gesture in the right direction. Thanks for the pointer to the Stahman Christmas-at-Sea cap, S (comment yesterday). It’s knit flat, in garter stitch, and first I thought no, no and then I got rather tempted. I’ve got to email the woolly-hats-for-sailors people – there’s no address for sending hats to, on the webpage I pointed to yesterday, and they might want to have something to say about pattern and yarn.

The Sky Scarf is stash, of course.

Dawn, your idea of knitting an odd no. of rows on it every day would solve the fringe problem, but I don’t like changing in midstream. There is some fringe on the far side, because sometimes I need more than two yarns to express the day. As this morning, which required pale blue, pale pink, and grey. I suspect, in the end, I’m going to knot the ends neatly and cut them off and stop fussing, but it’s always possible I’ll weave them in or leave a fringe. Or knot them and leave a short fringe?

Non-knit

I bought the Six Nations sausages yesterday, for tomorrow’s lunch. The young butcher who sold them to me is going to the match. That seemed a good omen. I love the way Edinburgh quietly sizzles during the week preceding a home international. I was right about most of the ingredients for the sausages, but France contributes onions (of course) and that leaves herbs for England.

We’ll have a warming casserole tomorrow for the grown-ups: they are going to have a chilly time of it. And the Little Boys, who prefer their food not to be mucked about, can have their sausages unadorned. A black bean and avocado salad can go in a glass bowl and leave the yarn undisturbed in the real salad bowl.