Hatz and Sweaters

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I finished up Hatz 11 yesterday. Had to frog back to the beginning of the decreases as I'd dropped a stitch.

I gave in to temptation and CO on a February Sweater! It's an EZ pattern in Knitter's Almanac. Here is a pic of one knit by Linda. Isn't it sweet?
Mine is being made from leftover yarn from the Baby Cargo Pants I made last year. I have the first part of the yoke done and a list of people lined up to help me if I run into problems with EZ's very concise cryptic directions.

It was over 100 degrees here yesterday. Look what was going on in Montana! Knitting Iris shares more pictures.

Crazy Aunt Purl has made a Pledge:

So, from right now [May 17th] until December 31, 2008 I am not buying anything inessential AT ALL. There are two exceptions: 1) Presents for other people and 2) I already bought and paid for some office furniture back in April that has yet to arrive, so that doesn't count as new spending but will arrive sometime during the moratorium.

The rest is just the essentials, food and necessities and that's it. Simple. I'm going to do this for the rest of the calender year....And that's when it clicked with me, finally, and I decided to drop out of consumerism entirely for the rest of the year. I'm just done with it.

It's funny, I've lived most of my life like this. Except the new office furniture part. Now, I'm NOT complaining. I went through a period of time wanting lots of stuff. And at one point, I gave into it. I had more rubber stamps than...well...Amelda Marcos had shoes? Really alot. And when I left my husband, I sold the rubber stamps for next to nothing. At that point I realized having it all wasn't all it was cracked up to be. No one cared I had all those stamps, including me.

So since then, I've tried to be careful creating huge stashes of things, whether it's yarn, needles, fabric, clothes. They are just not necessary...for me.

Simple Abundance is a great book to read if you find you are wanting to downscale your life and your attitude. It's not about how to get rid of "stuff" buy why you should and what will come of it. It's amazing how much "stuff" weighs you down. It take discipline to use what you already have and then decide if you can "do without" or replace it in a smaller scale.

Nature abhors a vacuum. Once you start getting rid of "stuff" you'll be surprised at the things (tangible and not) that come in to fill the emptiness.