some knitting, at last

Finally I had a chance to catch my breath and knit a little. While I was at the basketball game last night I kept thinking that I would much rather be at home with a cup of tea, a good book, and some knitting. It was a dull game, especially bad if you're a Milwaukee Bucks fan, as my husband is.

The light blue scarf is coming along quite nicely, and I'm excited to start Grumperina's Odessa hat to match. These accessories will coordinate fabulously with my light blue and grey North Face ski jacket. The baby kimono works much better in garter stitch. I need to pick up some more size 6 needles to keep going. My short little bamboo straights aren't long enough to hold the sleeves.

I'm attempting to reorganize my cookbook and cooking magazine collection that resides in a bookcase in the kitchen. I have a problem:
HOARDING! Here you see about 5.5 years of Cooking Light, 6 months of Rachael Ray magazines, back issues of Penzey's spice catalog (they put great recipes in there), and the random issue of Bon Appetit or Gourmet. The bookcase is pretty much full, so there's no room for these.

What to do? I just don't know. I should probably toss all the Cooking Light issues since they have a great website with recipe archives for subscribers. But what if I want to browse? Do I really need to keep subscribing? If I don't renew my subscription, I won't have access to the recipe archives. So maybe I should hang on to the magazines?

All you organized people who cut out the recipes you want to try each month and put them in organized little binders are snickering at me right now. That's a great system, but I'm just not that disciplined. Any and all suggestions are welcome here.

This dilemma is part of a larger hoarding phenomenon. Books, CDs, yarn, bath and body products, tea... I love and hoard all of these things. I'm not revealing the bulging bookcases or the CD shelves and binders, since those are partly my husband's responsibility, but here's the tea stash:
I'm making a concerted effort to drink lots of tea and invite friends over for tea in an attempt to whittle down the stash. I like to try new teas, but I also like to have old favorites on hand.

I didn't buy as many books when I lived in Madison and in the suburbs of Minneapolis. Both places have great public library systems with tons of books. There you can place your own holds online. The Chicago public library system has been a huge disappointment (as was the Milwaukee library), and consequently our bookstore purchases have increased dramatically and our bookcases are bursting. Both Paul and I are voracious readers, so it's a joint problem. The first thing people say when they walk in our living room is, "Wow! You have a lot of books!" After that happens, I hope to heavens that they don't brave the study, which is also covered floor-to-ceiling with bookcases. My fellow graduate students don't usually have that reaction, since they're just as guilty. :-)