As I’m currently in a knitting frenzy and will finish my current hat project in an hour, I need to add some things to the queue. The thing is, I can’t buy any more yarn. My clutch is slipping past the point where the husband is allowing my little Beetle on the road. I’m “stuck” driving an incredibly over-powered Trans Am until it’s fixed. Lots of potential fiber has been sacrificed in the name of getting my car back on the road as quickly as possible.

Knitters ignore the following, unless it interests you. Pick it back up in a few paragraphs.

For the people wandering in from a search engine looking for New Beetle info (2003 1.8t GLX), I have just under 57,000 on the stock clutch. Yes, I know that isn’t a huge amount, but you know that clutch is notoriously weak. Um…and some people (not admitting to anything here) may drive it fairly hard. Hell, I went through three sets of rotors (courtesy of VWoA) by 40k miles. Too bad only one coil pack failed while it was still under warranty. I’m still waiting for the other three to go.

We’ve ordered the VR6 clutch kit from Dieselgeek. While getting a lighter flywheel is the way to go with this kit, keep in mind we weren’t expecting to replace a clutch in the midst of holiday shopping (otherwise I could’ve used a new shifter as well). The same, weak stock clutch was only around $50 cheaper than the VR6, so it would’ve been silly not to go for more performance. Clutch should be in tomorrow and I’ll definitely be snapping photos of the process, for my own amusement if nothing else.

This is the husband’s first time getting his hands dirty on my car, so it should be an experience. Of course, he’s done a clutch replacement and piles of performance work on an A4 as well as an auto-to-6speed swap & upgraded most of the suspension on one of his Trans Am’s, so I don’t have any doubts he can do it.

Back to knitting content

As I was saying, I need a substantial project using stash yarn. I’m not really feeling a lace project (must be coming down with something) but if I could find an appropriate pattern for this yarn, I’d go with it.

I also have four natural colors of Icelandic that my sister sent me while she was stationed in Montana. There’s two skeins each (56g/68yds per skein) in a black, brown, gray and cream. I have no clue what to do with these. I also have Icelandic roving from the same people in black and cream.

Next up, I have a sweater’s worth of white cotton boucle in about a DK weight. I know there’s enough for a sweater because I took the apart the boxy, drop sleeve sweater my mother insisted I take. Please tell me someone has a suggestion for this yarn.

Then there’s piles of odd balls, project leftovers and lace. Anyone have any suggestions?