project withdrawal

Do you hate it when you finish a big project? I do. Whether it is finishing a long novel or binding off a sweater or coming to the end of a semester, I feel restless until I manage to find a new project that can occupy my mind and/or my hands. At present I only have one project on the needles - this lacy scarf for my mother-in-law. I like how it's turning out, but I find it exhausting. Every other row of lace is a little different, and I have to concentrate to prevent mistakes. It's not the kind of project I can relax with.

I'd really like a large project right now, especially as it is autumn here, and the leaves are falling, and it will soon be winter and time for hibernating, but I'm having trouble deciding. My main problem is my local yarn store. Now, living in New Zealand, home of the sheep, one would think lovely yarns would not be hard to find. But that's not so. My LYS carries Rowan (horrendously overpriced here, but at least one can find yarns that have disappeared from the shelves elsewhere, like Cork) and Jo Sharp and Paton's, but that's basically it. Otherwise it is bin after bin of squeaky acrylic or, if I'm feeling "funky", feather yarn. No handpainted sock yarns, no bins of linen or bamboo or even silk. And while the rest of the world is going through a knitting revival, here I always seem to be the youngest person in the store by decades and the only one not wearing an intarsiaed poodle. Sigh. I drool over yarns on the internet--Koigu, Artyarn, Handmaiden silk--and sometimes I indulge myself and buy the yarn for a project, like the Kollage Cornucopia, but the shipping is outrageous. Still, Ashford, home of the spinning wheel and an hour away, makes a lovely wool, so that's a small comfort.