I was perfectly happy not being a crocheter. I was a happy not-hooker, if you will. Until recently. Somewhere, somehow, in my meanderings across the web, I stumbled across a site featuring crochet models of hyperbolic space. And I was hooked.

Obviously, I am a nerd of the highest order. College math majors and lovers of spreadsheets, unite!

Were my extreme nerdiness not enough to get me to actually attempt a crochet model of hyperbolic space, this sentence clinched it:

The structural integrity is achieved by using coarse, cheap synthetic yarn. Wool is nicer to work with (and gentler on the hands) but it does not produce the satisfying stiffness of synthetics.

Do I sense a use for the grandma stash? Yes, yes I do!

Maybe I should try to master Euclidean space first. This was supposed to be a rectangle.

I’m going to have to consult the vintage book of every needlecraft under the sun that I stole borrowed indefinitely from my mother to figure out how to not lose stitches at the end of each row.

Though I’m a bit afraid that the powerful 1970′s aura that will result when acrylic meets book is going to suddenly compel me to take up macrame next.

Not the end of the world, but of the knitting penance. This is page 1150 of War and Peace, mile 21 of the marathon.

We’ve finally hit real winter temperatures with real snow here in Pittsburgh, and it’s fueling a sudden mad desire to finish this darn thing so I can curl up under it. Other than the Hederas, which I’ve been sneaking a few rounds of here and there, waiting for classes or meetings to start, this is the only project I’ve been working on.

I’ve doubled the blanket’s size since I started working on it again this fall. I’ve also done about two stripes in the last three-ish weeks of knitting since I got back from my parents’ house after break.

I seem to knit a lot faster than I used to. When I first started this blanket, I could only do about three rows in an hour. Now I can do five. I’ve got about 75-ish rows to go, so roughly 15 hours of knitting.

I’m going to finish this thing in February, yes I am!

Alternate post title 1: Yarn by the Numbers
Alternate post title 2: Forget Being Coy, We’re Talking About a Half-Marathon of Yarn
Alternate post title 3: Can’t Sleep…Yarn Will Eat Me…
Alternate post title 4: This is all KathyMarie‘s Fault

To clarify, it’s not KathyMarie’s fault that my yarn stash will eat me tonight after I go to sleep. But it is her fault that I know exactly how much yarn will be invading my bedroom and swallowing my head. She, after all, posted about her yarn inventory and her yarn spreadsheet and I was overcome.

Spreadsheets are quite possibly the next best thing to yarn. I love spreadsheets, I love yarn…of course I had to drop everything and make a yarn spreadsheet! A yarn spreadsheet with a pivot table. I am such a nerd.

In short, I have 12.9 miles of yarn. This includes oddballs. This does not include the grandma stash, anything in the tub o’ swatches, or yarn for any of the projects currently on the needles, so I’m probably under-counting by at least a mile of yarn.

I have:

• 0.6 miles of bulky yarn
• 1.4 miles of worsted/aran
• 0.8 miles of DK weight
• 1.5 miles of sport weight
• 4.4 miles of sock/fingering weight
• 4.2 miles of lace weight

Although I didn’t do an analysis by color, it seems that I am especially fond of:

• Reds and purples, particularly wine red/burgundy red shades
• Green-blues and blue-greens
• Dusty and denim blues

And all of that fits in this corner:

Not too bad, I don’t think, especially since most of that is already earmarked for a project. I do need to knit a lot of socks and shawls soon, though!