Hobby Holiday.

The first day of fall is my favorite day of the year. I have two holidays to celebrate at the beginning of this season; a days-long joyous religious celebration, and what I like to call "my hobby holiday". The knitting needles are out, and tonight they ceremoniously launched the first of the season's knitting projects.

This year, my project is to use up all the yarn in the bins and not buy a single thing throughout the season. No swooning over sweater patterns. No ordering early at the store. No checking gauges, no yardage math. Heading to the bins frees me from perils of exact measurements and pattern conversions. When I think of it this way, no holiday should ever include words like "exact" and "math".

Above, Project 2010-1, a narrow, basket weave scarf, in rough-spun natural cotton. There are four medium-sized balls of this yarn in the bins, so some lucky friend will either end up with an awkwardly short and useless table runner or a 32 foot long scarf. Joy will be spread!