Sheep On My Stuff

Another home-brewed pattern, but this one isn't quite ready for prime time yet.

I will grant you, it is a somewhat schlumphfy-looking bag. It's basically a prototype. It was also something for me to do with the leftover yarn I had once I was done with the Deep Purple Sweater. And since it was made in a wool I probably won't use again (and may not even be able to find again), I'm going to be writing down the pattern not for this yarn, but for a much more accessible felting wool, Patons Classic Merino. (It shouldn't take more than I have left, which is a little less than two balls. I hope.) I don't have a lot of experience felting, so I even made a gauge swatch for this. And I'm glad I did; this yarn reduces by about 33%, whereas the Patons Classic Merino reduced by 22% width-wise, but only by about 5% height-wise. (You can bet that'll require some different calculations as I work up the second bag.)

I am very pleased with how close to my mental image this bag turned out to be, though! And the flap was a cinch. Between this and a felted wool trivet, of which I do not yet have pictures, I managed to use up the rest of the yarn I had left from the Deep Purple project, which makes me very happy, too. And I'm getting better with the photos, I think, even if they're all being taken in the same windowsill. Credit to Jared Flood and David Reidy -- Jared Flood for the tip, David Reidy for the interview in which Jared gave the tip. (The tip was to use natural light, but try to get it sideways to your project rather than right behind it. It turns out the craft room windows are perfect for that.)

The clock's ticking. The meter's running. Oh, and by the way, I'm 30.

Goal: By September 26, 2009, stash weight down to 13,138g.

I finished a sweater!

I'm really happy with it. It's made with Sierra Pacific Glenisla, a 100% wool, feltable yarn which happened to be the Yarn of the Month at my favorite LYS. The pattern, worked from the top down, was really easy to follow and involved no (!) seaming. And, most importantly for me, it fits properly! (I made the 40" version; there's a smaller one at 36", and it goes up to 56".) I was a little worried about that, because I'm short, and knitting it for the first time, I had no idea how I would go about shortening the thing -- it's not constructed in a simple manner, as you can see.

The yarn could be nicer. It's just a little on the scratchy side, and I'm going to try washing it to see if that helps any. As for the pattern itself, I'd like more waist shaping -- another thing that I didn't have any idea how to implement the first time through. It looks kinda bulky from behind on me.

But ultimately, it makes me really happy. :) I'm really pleased with the way it came out, and I might be tempted to make it again at some point -- but there are so many things out there I'd like to knit that repeating a project seems silly until I've gotten through some others. My Ravelry queue is 117 items long, for heck's sake! And I have three projects on needles, and two I haven't started that have early December deadlines.

I also have a bit of leftover yarn from this sweater project, and an idea in my head for a felted bag to make with it. I'm looking forward to seeing if I can make it come out the way it looks in my head. :)

I would feel bad about how many stash posts it's taking to catalogue my whole collection, but. 26,441g. Really. It deserves seven posts.

I am so excited to have this count completed I can't even tell you. The total has changed since last time -- I completed a sweater (ZOMG!) taking my DK weight total down from 900g to 260g (and that 260g is going to go into a felted bag, I think), but I also ordered yarn for a sweater for Grant, and some Shine DK that I've sort of windfallen into and which is now MINE WOOHOO and enough for a sweater for me. (I don't know why I'm suddenly interested in sweaters, but I sure seem to be.) I picked up an extra skein of Cascade 220 so I can do armwarmers for a friend, also. But on balance, I've gone down since the last weigh-in, not up. I'll do one more on my birthday itself (even though that's a Friday and not a traditional blogging day), and that'll be my stash total, defining my goal for the next year. I CAN DO THIS.

When last seen, I was going through my sock yarn. We'll pick up there:

Continue reading 'Stash post (7/7)' »

As I mentioned last time, I have finalized totals on the stash now! \o/

I'll continue keeping tabs on it as I go. I have one week before my 30th birthday, and on September 26, whatever totals I've got, I'm going to try to be down to half that number by my 31st birthday. As of September 26, 2008, all previous goals are declared null and void -- it's all about destashing, baby!

Destashing 12,663 grams of yarn is gonna be tricky. No argument there. The key may end up being making sheep. A lot of sheep. Or hats. I'm only sorry more of my stash doesn't lend itself to sweaters, but it does seem to be mostly two or three balls of any given yarn. Still, I'm not going to let myself get discouraged! I think it can be done. In the first eight months of 2008 alone, I made 39 projects entirely out of stash yarn, including three shawls and a sweater. I can do this!

In the meantime, how about some more stash photos? We have 70 to go, and I'm not going to do them all in one block shot -- we've got one more stash post to go (so I'll be finishing right around my birthday, excellent timing). Let's start with sock yarn.

Continue reading 'Stash post (6/7)' »

Okay. I have a new organizational system going on -- rather than using Post-Its, I enter things directly into a spreadsheet, and I enter yarn type and color as I go -- which means that from here on out, things will be better organized, but today's post is a mishmash. Let me introduce you to some very random yarns in my collection.

First off, say hello to the classic I Really Don't Know Why I Have This Yarn At All yarn, two balls of Maggi's Linen:

Seriously, I have no clue. I guess I thought I was gonna make sheep or something. Anyway, there's 100g of it. I listed it as "will trade or sell" on Ravelry, and 300 people have it stashed, so who knows? It might get picked up. (I destashed some yarn that was listed "trade or sell" last week. AWESOME. For those of you on Ravelry, look here. I will send you that yarn for the cost of shipping. (I know some of it is scraps and some of it is crap yarn, but seriously, I will send you as much as you want for the cost of shipping. Take a look.) Big thanks to Ravelry's NeedleNerd and SleepyCat for helping me destash -- a total of 1020g have been destashed thanks to these two! If only I were letting myself count that towards my goal. But no, the rules are set; it's September 26 or bust. Still, that does mean less I'll have to destash after that!)

Anyway, here's the rest of today's mishmash:

Continue reading 'Stash post (5/7)' »

I had thought that I wasn't going to be able to show you a picture of the last-minute emergency rainbow squares I made for the charity blanket last month. By the time I remembered to take a picture, the squares looked like this:

However, luckily for this blog, the recipient (the person who's sewing the squares together) took some pictures of the squares as they came in! Hooray! And so here's the rest of the squares I made for the acrylic/synthetic blanket:

I got thirteen of those suckers done in a weekend, destashed all of my yellow, blue, and red Shine Sport, used up a bit of my Dark Horse Fantasy, and helped complete a blanket. :)

I have also managed to create six wool rainbow squares. Unlike the synthetic blanket, I'm not making squares with interesting stitch patterns; I'm just making stockinette squares and letting the color provide the interesting part. (I'm using leftover yarn from the rainbow sheep.)

Love comes in many colors.

I can't say what it was that made me think Adamas shawl, must knit, RIGHTNOWNOWNOW. It could have been the fact that I was dying to knit lace for myself -- not on a deadline. Or the Yarn Harlot's post. Or just the fact that it seemed like it'd be fun.

It was ridiculously fun, and as the pictures prove, this is a good house in which to be a sheep:

Do I know what I'm going to do with this shawl? No. Orange is not really my color, so... no, I have no idea. And yet it's finished and it's lovely.

I am really quite proud of it. :) However, the urge to knit lace hasn't gone anywhere. I'm currently working on the Flower Basket Shawl and Mystery Stole 4 (which I'm doing in grey with purple beads, and will be taking pictures of as I work through the clues). Hurry up if you want to join the Mystery Stole 4 group -- signups are going on through the 12th and then you're out of luck until the pattern comes out (and it won't be free then).

When you're taking pictures of your entire stash, it is sometimes hard to avoid missing things here and there. I missed a bit of eyelash yarn:

60g Fun Fur (Brown), to be precise, which means my table looks like this now (taking into account new purchases and a bit of along-the-way destashing):

And now the yarn pictures!

1. 2. 3.
Continue reading 'Stash post (4/7)' »

Sooooooo I may possibly have bought some yarn at a yarn sale. 1880g worth of yarn, in fact.

680g of Wool-Ease, specifically to bulk up my supplies for the Powers of Two Blanket.

300g of Classic Merino for... well, probably for more sheep.

200g of Dark Horse Fantasy for a Baby Surprise Jacket. Or something.

400g of Dark Horse Fantasy for a Secret Project.

200g of Cascade 220 for a Less Secret But Really Cool Project.

And 100g of feltable sportweight so I can make tiny sheep.

Well... at least it's already in Ravelry.