This week has been utterly unproductive knit-wise. Because of my destash (that’s still going strong!) I spent lots of time packaging up yarn and in the case of one tricksy skein, I spent 3 entire evenings dealing with this:

The dreaded yarn barf.

That, friends, is a pile of hopelessly tangled cashmere silk fingering weight yarn barf (on top of my stylin’ PJ pants). It was the worst. THE WORST! I’m not even sure how it got so tangled in the first place. It had been stored wound and when I dug it out of the stash, the outer ‘layers’ of the wound yarn had come off the ball and just instantly formed an impenetrable mass… or something. It was ridiculous. I blame it on the fiber mixture: short cashmere fibers blended with long silk fibers leads to yarn that will never break but does tend to get all caught up on itself in a web of fine, fuzzy fibers when two strands rub together. However it happened, it was evil, but I prevailed.

I win!

Victory was short-lived however. I was looking forward to a nice, long knit the evening after I mailed off the Tangled Mess when disaster struck — I was changing the water jug at work and somehow banged/tweaked the wrist I had previously injured a couple of weeks ago.

Back in the brace.

I definitely heard a distinct crunch. The pain is not as sharp as it was last time but I can’t twist or exert force with the wrist… so no knitting for a little bit. I swear, it’s starting to feel like somebody wants me to accomplish exactly zero of my knit-related goals in March. Sigh.

Twelve-hundred yards of laceweight silk.

At least I finally wound up the yarn I need for my wedding shawl! I should acknowledge that this only happened with the Fiasco’s help. He manually spun my swift-that-sucks-at-spinning while I wound the yarn and man, did those yards just fly by. Teamwork! I’m going out of town this weekend so will not be able to start the shawl until next week but it’s still a step in the right direction so at least that feels good.

Through the magic of Facebook (semi-sarcasm), I cam across a  great article (actually great) called “10 Life Lessons to Excel in Your 30s“. Some guy with a large blog following polled 600 of his readers over the age of 37 and asked them what they would tell their 30-year-old selves if they could go back. The answers were pretty consistent across the board, which makes me think maybe I should pay attention. My favorite section is #10: Be Kind to Yourself, Respect Yourself — which is something I’ve been really trying to focus on this year. In particular, I love this quote from one of the survey participants:

“Be a little selfish and do something for yourself every day, something different once a month, and something spectacular every year.” (Nancy, 60)

It’s perfect… I bet Nancy is a knitter.

*Title inspired by my new favorite song off my new favorite album by my new favorite band: American Authors. You can listen to the song on YouTube here. It’s worth it. The whole album is worth it, really. You’ve probably heard this one before.