Sheep On My Stuff

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.

Oops -- forgot a few worsted-weight yarns. So here's worsted-weight yarns plus Wool-Ease. As a teaser, I've also weighed the sportweight part of my stash, so here's what we've got:

And now for pictures!

1. 2.
3. 4.
5. 6.
7. 8.

And the rest of these are Wool-Ease!

Continue reading 'Stash post (3/7)' »

I'd like to be more environmentally conscientious than I am. One of the ways I've thought about using a reusable, rather than single-use, resource is by using reusable bags for grocery shopping. Ah ha!, I thought, perfect! I'll crochet some!

Well. The patterns around for crocheted market bags tend to make these enormous things that stretch so far they drag on the ground if I'm carrying them on my shoulder. And they take a huge amount of yarn. Not what I'm after.

I decided to try designing something that takes the natural stretch of a simple cotton yarn into account, and this is what I came up with. It's a granny square bag with two short handles. Experienced crocheters should be able to extrapolate how to make larger (or smaller) bags (and handles) just by looking at the pattern; instructions aren't given for changing the sizes. This is the size I like, and I think it's a good one. I've taken a few of these to the store and come back with comfortably-sized bags of groceries. And if they get messy, you can throw 'em in the washer and dryer with your towels.

Please follow the link to my Small Market Bag pattern! Like everything on this site, it is Creative Commons licensed; please feel free to share and distribute (as long as you keep my name and website attached). :) Many thanks to Wyoming Knott, Sorcha, and Moonrose for testing the pattern for me!

The bulky yarn lulled me into a false sense of security. Here's the list of what I'm going to need to tally up:

• Bulky yarn (finished) 3550g
• Worsted weight, non-Wool-Ease
• Worsted weight, Wool-Ease
• Sport weight
• Sock weight
• Lace weight

Today I give you the second of those categories: Worsted weight, non-Wool-Ease.

1. 2.

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

So, while I haven't quite given up on the idea of working 2 stash projects for every 1 new-yarn project I make (2:1 ratio), I know that the completed/tossed/frogged-to-new ratio is going to be impossible to manage (goal was 1.5:1; I'm currently at 0.8). It's time to set new goals, and this time they aren't connected to a calendar year. (That way I won't be going crazy with "ZOMG YEARLY GOALS!" knitting at the same time as I'm going crazy with "ZOMG HOLIDAYS!" knitting.)

My goal is this: on my 30th birthday (September 26), I will have X grams of yarn in my stash. By my 31st birthday, I will have X/2 grams of yarn in my stash.

A lofty goal full of stashbusting! But I think maybe I can do it!

Of course, in order to complete that kind of goal, it's necessary to know how much yarn I'm starting out with. And in order to have a number for the goal by my birthday, I need to spend the next 39 days doing the math. And thus begins the stash cataloguing project.

I started off tonight with an easy goal: find all my bulky yarn, photograph it, add it to Ravelry, and post the stats here. So here's what we've got:

That's 893 (round up to 900) grams of handspun wool from Spring Hill Romneys (mmmm, so soft and pretty; I'm thinking a vest for Grant this winter), 1900 grams of Storm Wool of the Andes Bulky from Knit Picks, two balls of Ecological Wool from Cascade at 250g each, and about 250g of Merino Light that's partly worked up (woohoo, head start!).

Total: 3550 grams of bulky-weight yarn, all 100% wool.

I actually didn't go through as long a bulky-weight period as many new knitters; I knew one knitter who spent over a year trying not to work with needles smaller than a size 15. As a result, very little of my bulky-weight yarn is from "the early days" -- the Merino Light sure is, as is the Ecological Wool, but the rest of it is stuff I bought because I loved it to pieces and am still willing to work with it now. I'm also excited to note that all this yarn is wool; I had this fear that most of my stash would end up being acrylic or some other fiber I've outgrown, and it seems that won't be the case at all. Yay!

Now, mind you: I'm not going to try to hold myself to knitting up half of my stash by weight in each yarn weight. So maybe I won't touch this at all -- or maybe I'll knit it all up because it'll be a quick 3550 grams. >_> However, I have a shocking amount of stash (this is not even the tip of the iceberg, it's a grain of salt on the tip of the iceberg), so it'll probably be a hell of a lot of yarn by the time I'm through. Maybe I should consider working all this up...

(And, hopefully, my last catch-up post. Whew!)

Crossposted from elsewhere, in a list of things that make me happy:

I really, really like knitting lace! I love the slender yarn, the sharp pointy needles I use (Harmony from KnitPicks), the semi-delicate nature of what I'm turning out, the YOs, the k2togs, the blocking process. I love that you can get a ton of knitting out of a single tiny ball of yarn. I love the patterns out there, and I really, really need to make myself another Sheep Shawl (the first one, I gave to my grandmother). I also want to make the Pacific Northwest Shawl for myself. But I have so many other shawls in the works before that happens; after the current one I'm working on, I plan to do one for an upcoming wedding. And I can't wait; it's going to be gorgeous. I have two other shawls on needles right now, too, and I love them both to pieces.

One of these days I'm going to design my own heirloom shawl, and even if I don't have kids of my own, I'll find someone to pass it down to. I'm really quite happy that my cousins are starting to be old enough to get married; the next generation in my family may have been delayed a bit by the fact that Grant and I seem not to be likely to have kids, but that doesn't mean the buck stops here. :)