I have two vices in this world: books and yarn. I did have three, but I gave up soft drinks (mostly) in 2015 when I went on a weight-loss spree.

Yes, I love chocolate, but since it’s a major food group and completely necessary to the health and well-being of the average writer’s brain, it doesn’t count.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been rearranging my books into something like an organized system, meaning that I now have a dedicated spot for my growing to-be-read pile.

But this post isn’t about books. This post is about yarn.

2015 brought a couple of huge changes in my life. I published The Choosing to fairly substantial financial success. I buckled down on my weight loss goals. And I decided to travel, something I’ve always wanted to do.

Here’s the thing about travel, though. It requires certain items, like suitcases, a passport, and clothes that can be worn out in public. Ok, my every day clothes can be worn out in public, but my basic wardrobe is some version of jeans and a t-shirt.

There’s actually a very good reason for this: I hate shopping for clothes. To be honest, I’m pretty sure I don’t even have the clothes-shopping gene, and if I had to wager a guess, I’d say that trait skipped me and my brother and tripled up in my sister, who is, by all measures, a champion mall crawler.

That’s not the only reason, though. I have one of those hard to fit bodies. Too curvy, too short, too too for any item designed with the tall, emaciated Victoria’s Secret model in mind. Which is pretty much all clothing.

I had fallen back into knitting a couple of years before that, and so I hatched out a brilliant plan: I would knit my own travel clothes. That way, I could choose classic pieces and the neutral colors and natural yarns I prefer, and tailor items to fit my unique dimensions.

It’s coming along, slowly but surely, I promise. For example, I have finished knitting Amy Christoffer’s Odele and Purl Soho’s Silken Straw Summer Sweater except for the edging. As soon as I figure out how to do an applied i-cord, I’ll finish those up and (probably) write posts on the knitting thereof. I’m also knee deep into knitting Alexandra Virgiel’s Persimmon (my at-home knitting project), Casapinka’s Little Plum Shawlette (I ran into a serious problem and had to stop), and Carrie Hostick Boge’s Allegoro (can’t remember why I set this one aside, but I had a good reason).

And that’s just for starters. Since deciding to knit my own travel clothes, I’ve been stocking up on yarns specifically for that purpose. In fact, I discovered, quite happily, that yarn shopping is nothing like clothes shopping and that if I’m not careful, my yarn buying sprees will outpace my ability to actually knit the projects.

Oh, wait…

Note: This post was written in April 2018 and never published. Since then, I’ve managed by some small miracle to finish the Silken Straw Summer Sweater and the Little Plum Shawlette, as well as a few other projects. If I published blog posts as I wrote them, that would be something, huh?