WIP hell

I'm trying to be disciplined. I really am. I'm diligently stashbusting before I buy more yarn. I haven't been to LYS in months. I haven't ordered from Knitpicks since February (except for one book and a couple skeins of dye-it-yourself yarn for the dyeing class I'm taking in December). I'm even making an afghan out of a whole load of acrylic yarn that I bought in my first (horribly naive) months of being a knitter. I knit up some recycled cotton into a simple top-down raglan sweater after my Diamonique ended up large enough to fit my boyfriend and me. At the same time. (I swatched and measured... I swear!) Actually, my sweater came out nicer than I expected and you can barely get me to take it off now. Knitting with cotton sucks, but wearing knitted-up soft cotton is awesome. I've had two pairs of socks on the needles for, oh, 3 months or so, and I'm determined to get them done. But do I pick easy, TV-knitting sock patterns in sock-weight yarn? NO! One pair is a cabled pattern in Regia (I swear I'm NEVER doing cables on size 1 needles ever again), and the other is a lacy, rippley pattern with lots of ktbls and YOs and decreases and stuff. Kinda like the Pomatomous socks (which I loved making and whipped through), but somehow the pattern doesn't seem to want to imprint itself in my little head. Which means the whole thing has been slow going. ACK! I swear, I will finish the rippley socks tonight. I finished the heel flap this morning; hopefully after three episodes of Star Trek Voyager tonight, this pair of socks will be DONE. And we won't even talk about my long-neglected Starmore wrap, St. Ciaran. Started in March, right after the Olympics (after Rogue I just had to do more crazy cabling). Got about 30 rows in, and the bloody thing has been languishing in my knitting basket since April. And hogging two of my Denise cords. (Yes, I realize that I could just transfer it to some scrap yarn or something, but somehow taking it off the needles would be admitting that this thing will never get done. I'm not prepared to do that... yet... If we get to the 1-year mark without some significant progress, I'll have to admit defeat.) But even though I'm determined to get all my WIPs done, I'm ITCHING to start something. With yarn that hasn't been sitting in my stash for months. I want to pick a pattern, *then* go yarn shopping to find just the perfect stuff. But no... WILL finish things. I think I need to appease the knitting deities or something. They've been wreaking havoc lately (and not just the elephant-sized Diamonique). I've had to frog way too much lately. And (horror of all horrors), a handknit sock went MISSING. After a thorough freakout, I did manage to locate the darned thing, but I still think the deities were trying to send me a lesson. "Thou shalt not covet a new project until emptying the knitting basket. And shoving WIPs under the couch does not count". Virtue is hard.