How Did This Happen?

There sat I, fiddling with a stick and some sparkly string and when I looked up I'd been overtaken by them!  "Them" being three other masses of string and associated sticks.  How did this happen?

Just look at this work space.  It is completely taken over and I don't think that I am responsible.

First, ignore the upper left where lies a crochet scarf that added a bit of zing to a recent ensemble.  I'm not the best housekeeper on the block and occasionally, things are untidy.

Check out the foreground for the current state of the skirt that I'm knitting.  The end is finally in sight and so it is always at the ready lest I be overtaken with a sudden desire for miles and miles of mindless stripes.

Skip on over to the back of the photo and a dark mass (actually it is blue boucle) is spilling out from a bag.  As though stockinette and garter stripes are not mindless enough, I started a blanket.  Stupid thing to do given what else is on the sticks, but at a very weak moment of needing a "lap" project, I cast on for this and brought it to knit nite.  And that is when, I believe,  I was overtaken by "them."

Look carefully at the photo and over to the right, in the middle of the frame,  is a scarf that followed me home.  I think that it is the scarf that is to blame for this state of uncontrolled yarnage.   And yes, the scarf followed me home.  Some crazed knitter, who claims to be my friend, foisted this half completed bit of lace on me because she - and I quote - "ran out of time to finish this thing that I [meaning my friend] started last summer."  She seemed to think that I have nothing better to do than to pick up her cast off (ha ha - I made a funny) and adopt it into my work stream.  

I have decided to be the bigger person and still call her my friend.  And it just so happens that finding snippets of time for another scarf (after all, it is half done!) from the Strangling Vine pattern is not that difficult.    You will be pleased to know that I did not strangle my friend, I did thank her politely.

But how did this happen?  I knit and knit, crochet and crochet and never seem to get ahead.