signs of stress, and stash-busting

You know that sock I started a day and a half ago? Well, here’s where it stands now:

Almost ready to start the heel flap!  This is a sure sign that I am stressed, as when I am stressed, I like to knit round and round and round almost obsessively.  So socks are very soothing when I am feeling stressed out.  And what might I be feeing stressed about?  Well, sadly, it’s that universal stressor, money.  Or the lack thereof, rather.  Things are pretty tight for us right now, what with moving having been so expensive, and my darling husband not having had any luck thus far with job-hunting (but we’ve got our fingers crossed on a couple of things!).  I’m finding being sole-breadwinner (especially on a grad-student stipend) to be quite stressful and draining, and I’m putting all of that into the sock. Well, not quite…that sounds like I’m knitting negative energy into the sock, but that’s not quite how I see it…it’s more like the sock is diffusing all that negativity, not absorbing it.

One thing I’ve considered doing to help us out, money-wise, is to sell off some of my yarn.  The only hangup here is that the bulk of my yarn was given to me in the form of birthday/christmas/what-have-you gifts.  And there’s something about selling something that was given to me that seems a little, I don’t know…ethically questionable?  And the yarns that I actually have paid for myself are ones to which I am quite attached.

So I’m not so sure about the yarn-selling thing.  But one thing I do want to do is impose a moratorium on yarn-buying.  Not that I’d be buying any right now, anyway, what with the bills being what they are and everything, but even when things do get settled down, I’m going to forbid myself from purchasing any yarn.  Because realistically, I have way too much already…it would take me a good couple of years, with the amount of time I have for knitting, to actually knit all of it up.  And while there are a few patterns that I very much want to knit but don’t have yarn for, there are even more that I do have yarn for, so I will focus on those for some as-yet-undetermined amount of time.  My own little stash-bust.  I will make one exception, however, and that would be for a skein or two of solid-colored sock yarn, since I would really like to try knitting a lacy or cabled sock pattern, and the wild, crazy-colored sock yarns I currently possess would be completely inappropriate for doing so.

So, that’s that.  No new yarns until I’ve knit up most of what I’ve already got.  And for now I’ll just keep going round and round and round on what I think I shall call the Candy Corn socks (don’t the colors make you think of that hideous stuff?) to fend off the feelings of stress that come along with having to be a responsible adult.  At this rate, these socks might only barely make it to October before being finished, but that’s ok.  I’ll just start another pair.