Sheep On My Stuff

At Quilt Passions, Kailua-Kona, HI:

QP: Ooh! Decided you needed a little sock yarn?
Me: Yes! *sheepishly* Well. I don't know if I needed more sock yarn…
QP: Oh, but it's here! And you're here!
Me: *relieved and excited* Yes! Yes!
QP: And this is your Hawaii sock yarn!
Me: EXACTLY! Yes! Yes! You get it!

Actually, Quilt Passions was full of some really wonderful yarn I'd never seen before. This being Hawaii, it's mostly silk, bamboo, and cotton blends — all really gorgeous. I didn't want to go overboard, though, so I picked up a couple of (large) balls of (very very nice) sock yarn from Cascade (I didn't even know they made sock yarn other than Fixation), which will probably be a shawl and not socks at all.

I do like to get yarn when I go places. When we were in New Zealand, I got some yarn. :) I've gotten yarn in California and yarn in Texas, and here I am in Hawaii with more souvenir yarn. I love the idea of knitting something out of it that I can look at and remember how wonderful this trip was — and it has been wonderful!

Still nearly a week before we have to leave. I hear it was snowing in Seattle yesterday. The weather's kind of cloudy here, but we'll take it!

I have been having setbacks on the destashing goal. It's now a month since my challenge started, and until today I was actually up a few grams in the stash (about two balls of yarn's worth). It's not because I'm buying at random, thank heavens — it's really because I've had to buy more yarn for gift projects. However, that's all done now (I think I have enough to complete all the gift projects in my queue) and there's starting to be a light at the end of the gift-knitting tunnel. I am desperately hoping that by November 13th, I'll be down to two gift projects and nothing else.

Why November 13th? Well, there's something happening around then…

And a certain Epic Elekk is very excited about it…

Yes, November 13th is the release date for Wrath of the Lich King, the second World of Warcraft expansion. Grant and I pre-ordered our copies from Amazon last night (Amazon is offering in-home-on-release-date-delivery for Amazon Prime members, which we are; good for them for that, because they didn't do that when Burning Crusade was released).

I don't really anticipate more World of Warcraft-related knitting projects, but I will say that I get a surprising amount of knitting done while waiting for people to gather for dungeons, flying around on gryphons, and generally waiting while stuff gets done. So, with any luck, even after November 13th, I'll have something to post about. :)

Meantime, today someone I know mentioned that one of her wishlist items was "self-striping sock yarn". It so happens I have quite a lot of that still in my stash, and the more I think about it, the more I realize it's just never going to get knit. I ended up packing up about 600g worth of self-striping sock yarn for her, which feels like a very cheaty way to destash yarn, but at this point, drastic steps need to be taken in a hurry. Remember how I said I'd finished buying all the yarn for gift projects? Well — I have… but 1000g of it hasn't arrived yet, so it isn't technically on the spreadsheet (or in Ravelry). When it gets here, I'm going to be behind again. (On the bright side, it's gift yarn. It will be all knit up by Christmas… minus the few extra skeins I bought for sanity's sake.)

As of today, I have 25,682g of yarn in my stash — 594g less than on 9/26/08. I'm going to call that my October count (as I totally forgot to take a measurement on 10/26), and hope that by 11/26, I've made a little more progress. To meet my goal, I really need to be destashing or using about 1kg of yarn per month.

…something tells me some more hardcore destashing is going to be necessary in the long run. People who want to be informed when I start destashing cashmere, I suggest you make yourselves known sooner rather than later. ^_^

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 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)' »

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)' »

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)' »