I Don’t Want to Belong to Any Club...

...that will accept people like me as a member. ~Groucho Marx

I hope the new year is going well for everyone.  I've been usually productive on the creative front.  I've gone through my stashes and put together plans that will help me thin the herd, challenge myself creatively and of course be productive/creative.

As I contemplated my craft-related goals for this year, in conjunction with my larger personal goals, I wanted to participate in a yarn club.  Here's the catch, I have more yarn, than any one person should own*, so signing up for a new club at a cost, was out of the question.  Additionally,  I didn't want this club to cost anything more beyond the initial outlay already committed.  I even wanted to store the "club" materials in materials I already had (I can get obsessed pretty easily).

First a confession:

I do not enjoy knitting socks.  I know.  Heresy.  Further heresy, I detest wearing hand knit socks.  I find them horribly uncomfortable, bulky and unpleasant.  Some of this may be because of my options in footwear and my large-ish feet/calves, nonetheless, not my favorites.

As my stash will attest, I do, however,  love sock yarns.  With help from Kristine, I recently culled through my sock-weight yarns bin and selected 7 yarns and corresponding patterns for my stash-busting self-imposed shawl club.

All in a re-purposed hat box.

January's randomly selected yarn was 2 skeins of Malabrigo sock in the Ochre colorway.  This beaut has been marinating in stash since Malabrigo sock came out well over a year ago.

This yarn was paired with the  EZ 100th Anniversary Camping Half-Circle (ravelry link) and size US 6 needles. I'm giving myself 2 months per shawl, I know that some selections will take longer or (pipe dream) shorter.

I'm so excited to have a plan and the energy to commit to it. ~ksp

*Now I know a lot of you out there in the blogosphere are formidable stashers, but let me say this, I produced not one, zero, sip, zilch knitted projects in 2010.  I am less than a good steward when it comes to yarn. 

P.S. Happy Birthday Mommy!