I’m currently in the process of cleaning out my “in use” craft area. You know the kind I mean. You have your deep storage (buckets or boxes, closed and stacked), your ‘display’ storage (drawers or shelves, or boxes or tubs that are out and open), and then the “in use” supplies. Some people have these in project bags, or on their coffee table, nightstand, end table, or even the dining table. My “in use” area begins on the little table beside the loveseat, and often spills over onto the adjacent cushion. (When it spills onto the other cushion as well, it gets cleaned. I have to have some place to sit.)
Recently I’ve decided to try and prune it back to its originally intended area: the side table. A small, neat quantity on the side table. Greg totally supports me in this. (Isn’t that sweet of him? :lol:) I’ve really found a surprising amount of yarn (and other things) that just never got put away. Yarn from the dodo. Yarn from my Simple Circle Hat. Yarn from Max’s Simple Circle Hat (which was, in turn, left out from Greg’s gloves). My basket of scrap balls, last used for the snake puppet and the elephant. Cotton from coasters. A book, last used to reference a stitch pattern for something. Liesel is still there, but she can stay. I want to finish her eventually, dangit. That’s not even counting sweater recycling projects, my notebooks, and supplies for things I’m working on right now, like the blue cotton top and my next toy (which is almost finished and is pretty awesome). Why, yes, that did all fit into a surprisingly small area. Lots of stuff. There’s still more.
Anyway, I decided to finally frog something that has been untouched for months. First, though, I thought I’d document it photographically:

Yes, that’s most of a sock. And I hate it. It’s made from Lion Brand ‘Magic Stripes’ that I got for three dollars a ball at Garden Ridge. (Sadly, they were liquidating their yarn aisle. Had I realized that I probably would have bought more than I did – interestingly enough, the blue cotton top is being made with yarn from the same haul.) Pattern: sock from Ann Budd’s Handy Book of Patterns, size 0 needles (I think). It’s the 2×2 ribbing that made me want to claw my eyes out. We hates it, yes, precious. For some reason I decided that it would be neat to have ribbing in the foot of the sock. (Bad. Bad, bad decision as far as that goes. I was already so sick of ribbing that it completely killed the project.) When I pulled the almost-sock out of its tomb – er, bag…I was really surprised at how nice it felt. And the ribbing is much, much stretchier than the ribbing I’m doing in worsted cotton. I will definitely be working with it again – I’ll probably make Max some more socks. He really liked the last pair I made him, even though they didn’t stay up properly since I modified a pattern to get the right size. Now I have a pattern for them (same book as the doomed ones) so hopefully they will fit better.

Well. That was much, much longer than I meant it to be. Supportive Socks, rest in peace.