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!

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. ^_^

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

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:

	Essential, Flint Tweed. I'm not crazy about tweed sock yarns; I have a friend who loves tweed and makes it look good, but this is a different kind of tweed than the tweed she likes. I got this as part of a sampler, and I am sure that someday I will knit it up. However, that day has not yet come.
	Risata in black. It's a lovely yarn as far as I can tell, but I'm not really sure what the point of wool/cotton/elastic blend sock yarn is. I always figured cotton/elastic sock yarn was for people who are allergic to wool, so if you add wool in there… then what? And if you're not allergic to wool, why would you want cotton and elastic? Maybe the mystery will be solved when I start working with it.
	From the now-discontinued line of Sock Landscape, this is Cape Cod. I'm not sure where the rest of it went. It may have become socks at some point!
	The heartbreaking Shale Multi that almost made a pair of awesome awesome awesome socks, but instead made only one. I weep.
	Regia Silk. My very favorite pair of socks for myself are made of this, and I'd really like to get around to making another pair, or another couple of pairs. They're done in a tiny gauge, and are only ankle socks. (The feel of socks slipping down my calves, or socks on my calves, is just not one I like, so ankle socks it is.) I thought perhaps I'd gone overboard on the tiny gauge, but instead these socks have turned out to feel very strong and like they'll wear well.
	More Regia Silk, but this time in grey. :)
	When we went to New Zealand, I brought lots and lots and LOTS of sock yarn, all in this new variety I'd picked up at my favorite local yarn shop. It's called Patons Kroy, and some people really like it. Maybe we got a bad batch. All the socks I knitted fuzzed like mad and had no memory, slipping down uncomfortably into Grant's shoes almost as soon as he put them on in the mornings. These are the only socks he's ever thrown out of mine, and I have to say, they deserved it. I don't know why I have this little ball of yarn left! At any rate, at one point during the vacation I realized I should have been knitting all along as we drove around (we drove a lot, all the way from Auckland to Wellington, where we then caught a ferry across Cook Strait and then took a train to Christchurch, and from there we drove to Dunedin and then up to Queenstown, from whence we departed. It was a lot of driving), as we'd have had more socks. Well, it's just as well I didn't.
	By contrast, here we have a teeny ball of Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock, and while I don't know what I'll do with it, I know it'll be nice. Shepherd Sock is one of my favorite kinds of yarn ever, just outstanding, and I'm only sorry that all the colors I have in my stash (or most of them) are multicolored, as you can see:
	here…
	…and here…
	…and here…
	…though I do have some grey…
	…and black…
	…and white.
	In other leftovers, I also have some black Essential…
	…and some tan v1 Essential.
	And a random ball of Jaeger Matchmaker Merino 4-ply.
	And a scrap of Lion Wool which would seem totally useless if I didn't know I'd need it for sheep faces.

And that's all for non-lace yarns! Now for the lace. Oh, lace yarns. How I love you. You take up so little space, but you provide so very many hours of knitting enjoyment!

	The leftovers from my Windowpane shawl.
	Two gorgeous hanks of Oregon Coast. I don't know what I'll knit this into, but this is my color, so I'll probably keep it, whatever it is. Maybe another Adamas shawl.
	Gloss Lace Bare NOM NOM NOM. I have a project all picked out for this.
	Gloss Lace Sterling OH MY GOD THE JOYOUSNESS. I love this yarn to distraction. I don't know what I'll do with it, but it will be something glorious.
	The label on this one reads "Baruffa Decato", and it's some of the softest laceweight ever. It's also lighter weight than Shadow — cobweb weight, maybe? It's lovely. I'm using it in the Mystery Stole 4 project. So far so good.
	A beautiful hand-dyed yarn I bought from djinnj on Etsy. The picture doesn't do it justice. I'm not sure what to do with this, but it'll need to be spectacular. (I am very, very lucky I've been trying to be good about buying yarn lately, or there would be a lot more hand-dyed from Etsy in my stash.)
	This one is called "Leprechaun", and I have something in mind for it. I just don't have the pattern yet. :) Which may be just as well, since I have so much in the knitting queue…
	I have this crazy idea that I'd like to knit a shawl or a blanket in a ring… to represent the Stargate. This would be great if I decided to do it in laceweight, but I'm thinking a Chappa'ai blanket would beat a Chappa'ai shawl, so I'm probably going to use this on a project that'll coordinate with the Leprechaun yarn above.
	More laceweight. So much of this multicolored stuff is discontinued laceweight from KnitPicks. I don't know why they got rid of it, but I'm glad I ordered it when I did!
	My favorite of the discontinued Gossamer colors. I look forward to knitting this into something. :)
	Pink is so very much not my color. But it'll be a great gift. :)
	Two hanks dark purple heather. I'm sure I'll find something to do with it.
	This has a pattern and coordinating beads, but it's going to be a while before it works its way to the top of the knitting queue.
	I love this color. I think this is going to need to be rectangular; it's definitely going to be for me.
	I think I have just enough of this to do an Adamas shawl, and if not that, a Diamond Fantasy for sure.
	Leftovers from my Adamas shawl. I'm amazed by how much is left; that shawl really doesn't take a lot of yarn!
	KnitPicks Bare: just when you think you've used it all up, no! There's more! I'll figure out something to do with it. :)
	Some grey Zephyr, probably enough for a very lightweight scarf.
	White Zephyr, enough for… um. I don't know what. :)
	"Rose Garden" seems like such a weird name for this color, but I do like it quite a bit. It's very vibrant and cheerful. Maybe I should do something with this that actually features roses.
	Yarn for the Top Down Purple sweater — Sierra Pacific Glenisla. It's the yarn of the month over at Ben Franklin Crafts here in Redmond, and I'm not sure what I make of it. It's a little rougher than I might like, but then it hasn't been washed or blocked. It is pretty, and it's certainly not too scratchy to work with — a pretty standard texture for a feltable yarn that isn't lucky enough to be Cascade 220. :) I bought seven balls, and the sweater used six (almost precisely). I made the second size, 40", but it goes from 36" to 56". It's a neat pattern, and I'll post pictures of it soon. :)
	Purple yarn for contrast to the above, for the same project. I bought 200g, but only needed 35g. The rest is going into a feltable bag. Or perhaps "feltable bags", plural.
	Swish DK Merlot Heather. I ordered one ball of this so Grant could see if he liked it better than the Cobblestone Heather for a sweater I'm planning to make him. It turned out he did, so I ordered him more of this, and am keeping the Cobblestone Heather for myself. :) :) :)
	The aforementioned Cobblestone Heather. Can't wait to decide on a project for this. :) I have 1845 yards of it, so I basically have plenty for anything I want. :)

And we're done! Shocking yet marvelous!

My birthday's Friday. Can I destash 13,221g of yarn before September 26, 2009?

(Okay. Can I at least come in under 26,441g before 9/26/09?)

I can try!

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.

	This might end up being a turtle eventually. It's very turtle-like and pretty!
	…I might have bought this for being a turtle someday? I'm not honestly sure. This may end up getting put in the "trade/sell" category.
	Another option for turtles.
	Cascade Fixation, a wool-free sock yarn — I made socks for someone allergic to wool out of these, and this is what's left over.
	More heresy: I am not fond of Koigu KPPPM. Leftovers from a pair of socks.
	This made some neat socks. I knitted them in Leeds, England, while there for a Highlander convention. :)
	Oh, Regia Mouline, the only kind of Regia I'll buy these days (apart from Regia Silk), because my husband likes it. It's got such great memory, I can see why he's fond of it.
	Leftover Regia Crazy Colors. This has actually been destashed, but I'm leaving it in because I have a story to tell about it! I made socks for my mommy out of this, even though, let's face it, Mom wears flip-flops in the house and not woolly socks, and has done so for the last 25 years. But I was new to the world of knitted objects and had not yet figured out that Mom Likes Hats! (Mom lives in Indiana where it gets cold and snowy in winter. Apparently, one of her hats was actually stolen at one point because someone liked it so much. Now I make her hats every year. :) )
	Austermann Step, with jojoba and aloe! No, really. I'm not sure how that works out, as I have not yet knit with this. I got this yarn in Vancouver, B.C., on a trip where the real find was a ton of Cadbury. I also bought a bag of Smarties, and truthfully, I do still like M&Ms better. But the people in Canada, not being barbarians, appreciate Cadbury. That alone would be worth emigration.
	Fortissima Socka, in a grey that looks a lot like that Regia Mouline. I plan to make socks for Grant out of this, in hopes that he'll like them as much as the Regia ones (this yarn is easier to get; I can get it at the yarn shop that's within walking distance to my house).
	Another yarn I bought with the thought of making turtles.
	Fancy yarns don't usually seduce me, but black/grey ragg (or white/grey, or white/black) is one of my weaknesses.
	Who else got some Essential while it was still kinda scratchy? I did. This is what I call "Essential v1"; it's nowhere near as good and soft as v2.
	More Essential v1.
	Essential v2 in Cocoa. Man, this is nice stuff.
	Essential v2 in Burgundy. Someday I'll make cabled socks out of this and wear them around Christmastime.
	My favorite sock yarn, bar none. It's Essential v2 and it's grey. I don't need anything else.
	Essential v2 in Navy. Grant has been known to accidentally run off with one navy sock and one black sock. Clearly we need more light in our bedroom in winter mornings.
	Essential Meadow Multi. Not sure what I'll do with this, but I will probably make it into socks despite being kind of tired of self-striping sock yarn.
	Felici Pebble. Okay, I may be tired of self-striping sock yarn, but this stuff is gorgeous.
	Essential Dune Twist. Mmmmmm, ragg yarn! R! I say R-A! R-A-G! R-A-G-G! SOCK! R-A-G-G-S-O-C-K RAGG SOCK! Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo! RAGG SOCK! …okay, if you remember that, you win at life. :)
	Black and grey ragg yarn. In Essential. Be still, my beating whatever. ^_^

Okay, there's one more stash post coming, and then I'm FINISHED. See you next week; I'll be turning out the rest of my sock yarn and my laceweight!

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:

	Knit Picks Sock Garden Hydrangea. Yes, I ordered it just for the name. (Hydrangea is kind of an in-joke amongst me and some of my writer friends. You Don't Want To Know. :) ) This is destined to be a felted sheep eventually.
	Happy Feet sock yarn in a lovely brown. But the thing is, I'm kind of done with fancy sock yarn for socks. I'll probably make this into a shawl — it might be a small one, but it'll be pretty. Or I could do the Adamas shawl again; it only takes about 800 yards, so I could manage it easily.
	Knit Picks Memories Rocky Mountain Dusk. Again, it's lovely, but I'm done with pretty sock yarn. I just want plain boring socks at this point. Or maybe lacy ones. Anyway, regardless, Not This In Socks. So another shawl, maybe. I'll probably never get sick of lace shawls.
	Sock Garden Hollyberry. This just screams "Christmas" to me, but in a good way. I'm thinking there need to be some Christmas Sheep made out of this, but they do need a feltable red or green face yarn! I'll probably need to order some Palette to get a good match.
	Gloss Cocoa. Isn't it gorgeous? I don't know what I'll do with it, but no doubt I'll think of something.
	Gloss Dusk. There's an Alice Starmore sweater I want to make out of this.
	Palette Tan. Maybe a Fair Isle hat, with the next one…
	Palette Nutmeg. I actually have two balls of this, but I thought I only had one, so this is the picture I took.
	Matchmaker Merino 4-ply, dark grey. Um. Something. Arm warmers. I don't know.
	See above, only purple!
	See above two, only black!
	Oh, God, I almost don't want to knit with this so much as I want to sleep with it. It's cashmere/silk, and it's gorgeous. I have thought about making steampunk Victorian handwarmers/armwarmers for a couple of friends of mine (one of whom is allergic to wool, and thus, hey, maybe cashmere?), but have yet to find an appropriate pattern. OH MY GOD IT'S SOFT.
	I really haven't got the faintest idea what to do with this. I mean, it's bright white, and I seriously doubt it will hold any dye. Um. Hmm. Ponderponder. But it's quite soft!
	I needed black…
	…and red. I did! No, I'm still not going to say why.

Okay. So, all told, now my totals look like this:

There is so much more sockweight coming you cannot even imagine. There's a ton of laceweight, too. However, much to my surprise, there's only 5435 grams of sockweight and 3335 grams of laceweight — yes, the entire stash is now photographed, uploaded to my gallery, uploaded to Flickr, and entered into Ravelry, ZOMG — and I can say for sure that I have 25,326 grams of yarn total.

I'm really not sure what I'll have by the time my birthday rolls around; if I continue knitting and avoid buying any more yarn, I will probably not have much more to add to the spreadsheet — the only yarn in the house that isn't in here is the ball and a half of blue Shadow that's being made into the Flower Basket shawl, and since I intend to finish that by the time my birthday hits, it may not need to be counted. This said, the Puyallup Fair is going on right now, and I intend to go and look for yarn. :) Maybe I'll have destashed and knitted up enough by then to make it a zero-sum proposition.

It is about time to make a list of Projects I Want To Have Done By December, though. And the Mystery Stole by PinkLemonTwist has started up, and it looks like it's going to be gorgeous — I'm using a grey laceweight called Baruffa Cashwool and some gorgeous purple beads. I'm also getting started on some of the projects I have had on the needles forever (one Baby Surprise Jacket is done, just needs buttons, and if I'm really lucky, I'll have enough yarn for a second), and I need to re-measure myself and figure out which size of the Cable-Down Raglan I'm knitting (I started out knitting one size, but I've lost 15 pounds and a shirt size since then; I may need to rip back a pattern repeat).

Also, if anyone knows how much yardage a Baby Bog Jacket takes, can you let me know? I'd like to use up about 800 yards of Dark Horse Fantasy on it, but I don't know if that's quite enough!

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.
4. 5.
6. 7.
8. 9.
10. 11.
12. 13.
14. 15.
16. 17.
18.

1. 245g Shine (Cloud)
2. 20g Shine (Cherry)
3. 45g Shine (Cream)
4. 50g Zitron Polo (White)
5. 725g Zitron Polo (Grey)
6. 45g Microspun (Grey)
7. 80g Microspun (Royal Blue)
8. 75g Microspun (Black)
9. 25g Microspun (White)
10. 100g Merino Style (Honey)
11. 100g Merino Style (Moss)
12. 110g Wool-Ease Sportweight (Red)
13. 175g Wool-Ease Sportweight (Green)
14. 140g Wool-Ease Sportweight (Fisherman)
15. 40g Wool-Ease Sportweight (White Frost)
16. 55g Wool-Ease Sportweight (Dark Rose Heather)
17. 50g Bel Time Farm Merino/Bamboo (Orange)
18. 400g Bel Time Farm Merino/Bamboo (Purple)

My favorite out of these: that beautiful merino/bamboo in the last two pictures. It's so soft and delicious I want to snuggle in it. I think I have enough purple to make a whole sweater, but the orange is going to be a hat or scarf. Either way, they're MINE MINE MINE! The only person I love enough to give this yarn to is Grant, who wouldn't want a purple sweater. Probably. I haven't asked, and don't plan to. :)

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.

And now for pictures!

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

And the rest of these are Wool-Ease!

9. 10.
11. 12.
13. 14.
15. 16.
17. 18.
19. 20.
21. 22.
23. 24.
25. 26.
27. 28.

And their identifications:

1. 50g Swish Superwash (Dark Grey)
2. 50g Swish Superwash (Squirrel Heather)
3. 50g Swish Superwash (Dublin)
4. 50g Swish Superwash (Jade)
5. 50g Swish Superwash (Ebony)
6. 100g Muskoka (Grey)
7. 125g Lorna's Laces Shepherd Worsted (Flames)
8. 95g Cascade 220 (Light Brown)
9. 20g Wool-Ease Dark Rose Heather
10. 210g Wool-Ease Oxford Grey
11. 85g Wool-Ease Natural
12. 250g Wool-Ease Mushroom
13. 130g Wool-Ease Woods
14. 175g Wool-Ease Grey Heather
15. 30g Wool-Ease Denim
16. 110g Wool-Ease Cranberry
17. 70g Wool-Ease Green Sprinkles
18. 65g Wool-Ease Highland Twist
19. 50g Wool-Ease Blue Heather
20. 60g Wool-Ease Berry Heather
21. 80g Wool-Ease Blue Sprinkles
22. 30g Wool-Ease Country
23. 70g Wool-Ease White Sparkles
24. 15g Wool-Ease White Frost
25. 55g Wool-Ease Green Heather
26. 100g Wool-Ease Black
27. 2g Wool-Ease Light Rose Heather
28. 3g Wool-Ease Pines

That's a total of another 570g of non-Wool-Ease and 1610g of Wool-Ease, bringing me up to 5659g worsted-weight (not including Wool-Ease), or 7269g total of worsted-weight yarn and 10,819g of bulky and worsted-weight yarn, all neatly entered into Ravelry (rah rah rah!).

Tune in next time to see what those 3279g of sportweight are!

• 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.

5. 6.

7. 8.

9. 10.

11. 12.

13. 14.

15. 16.

17. 18.

19. 20.

21. 22.

23. 24.

25. 26.

27. 28.

29. 30.

31. 32.

33. 34.

35. 36.

37. 38.

39. 40.

41. 42.

43. 44.

45. 46.

47. 48.

49.

And now for identification:

1. 22g Sugar 'n' Cream stripes (neapolitan)
2. 45g Sugar 'n' Cream twist (brown/cream)
3. 62g Cotton-Ease (brown)
4. 50g Soy Wool Stripes (black/pink/gold)
5. 78g Lion Suede (purple multi)
6. 60g Patons Classic Merino (Prairie)
7. 100g Patons Classic Merino (Forest)
8. 100g New Zealand yarn — from our 2005 trip (brown multi)
9. 195g New Zealand yarn — from our 2005 trip (green multi)
10. 135g New Zealand homespun — from our 2005 trip (grey)
11. 32g New Zealand homespun — from our 2005 trip (purple multi)
12. 20g Lion Wool (olive)
13. 70g Lion Wool (grey)
14. 100g Schaefer Little Lola (autumn multi)
15. 100g Schaefer Little Lola (green multi)
16. 100g Schaefer Little Lola (grey multi)
17. 480g Lion Cashmere Blend (light grey)
18. 120g Lion Cashmere Blend (dark grey)
19. 50g Shine Worsted (Cream)
20. 50g Shine Worsted (Seaspray)
21. 50g Shine Worsted (Grass)
22. 50g Shine Worsted (Ebony)
23. 500g Phoenix Soy Silk (purple)
24. 700g Phoenix Soy Silk (ivory)
25. 400g Phoenix Soy Silk (green)
26. 185g Dark Horse Fantasy (peach)
27. 30g Wool of the Andes (Chestnut)
28. 25g Eyelash ? (grey)
29. 35g Cascade 220 (black)
30. 25g Cascade 220 (black)
31. 50g Cascade 220 (blue)
32. 15g Cascade 220 (red)
33. 45g Cascade 220 (dark brown)
34. 15g Cascade 220 (dark grey)
35. 100g Cascade 220 (dark grey)
36. 50g Cascade 220 (dark red)
37. 15g Cascade 220 (grey ragg)
38. 125g Cascade 220 (ivory)
39. 30g Cascade 220 (Jayne Hat orange)
40. 100g Cascade 220 (light brown)
41. 70g Cascade 220 (light green)
42. 5g Cascade 220 (blue multi)
43. 85g Cascade 220 (navy)
44. 70g Cascade 220 (orange)
45. 80g Cascade 220 (pink)
46. 50g Cascade 220 (pink ragg)
47. 35g Cascade 220 (purple)
48. 100g Cascade 220 (sea multi)
49. 80g Cascade 220 (yellow)

That's a total of 5089 grams of worsted-weight that isn't Wool-Ease, bringing me up to a total of 8639 grams of yarn so far. Tune in next week for another update, and (hopefully) a bag pattern!

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…

Then I did something terrible.

I started counting yarn I'd bought and stashed — but hadn't worked up — in the goals.

Oh boy.

Counting each instance of stashed yarn as a "started" and "new" project, I am now at 1.3:1 (eek!) on completed/started projects and… 1.7:1 (ACK) on stashed/new projects.

In other words, I have bought a lot of yarn.

*hangs head in shame*

On the bright side, when I actually begin working the newly-stashed yarn into projects, I will then be able to count it as both stashed AND new, and if I finish those projects, they will go into both the completed AND started categories.

Srsly, I may not be buying any more yarn until the end of the year. (Yeah, that seems incredibly likely.)

Also, I hope that buying cross-stitching patterns doesn't really count. I mean, I've only bought one (with sheep) and two booklets (one for one specific pattern, one for the whole thing) this year, plus some fabric that was on clearance. And I'm working up one that was in my stash, and have only three WIPs (including that one) and four "want to do" and one "will do for yearly Christmas ornament" projects on tap, and that's all I've had in the house for ten years, excluding finished projects, of which there are five unframed, four in the framing process, and ten framed and on display in the house. That makes a total of 29 — 14 completed through framing, 5 completed through stitching, 3 in progress, 4 kits bought, 3 patterns planned, and the 2009 Paula Vaughan Quilt project. I am not crazy. I think. OH HELP. I DON'T KNOW ANYMORE.

ETA: OH JOHN RINGO NO. I had a math error in my spreadsheet. I'm not down from 1.4 to 1.3. I am down from 1.4 to 0.9. Is it even going to be possible to get up to a 1.5 ratio again? Clearly I need to be knitting more projects from the stash. And quickly.

Yarn used… you know this already, right? Wool-Ease sportweight in Wheat, size 4mm needles.

Even Beautiful Sheep is having trouble making it look interesting. I've finally cast on the extra sleeve stitches, though (I did short rows first). Hopefully next week I'll have pictures of a sweater to show you.

To make up for that, here are two completed dishcloths that have been sitting in a box in my yarn closet for months.

*
Yarn used: Sugar 'n' Cream solids, size 4.25mm needles.

Finally, finally, finally. Say hello to Little Ty Sheep, returning to model the dishcloths. Awww.

The yarn closet is looking better now! Well, actually, it's looking much the same (full of yarn). However, I have found the rest of the craft room, and I am delighted. The unfinished objects now have a place. The finished objects that may or may not find their way to Etsy have found a place. And I got rid of another couple of projects in the bargain — one frogged, several tossed. This delights me — and bumps my completed/frogged/tossed-to-new ratio all the way up to 1.6 for the year. Yay!

Here's a picture of all the Wool-Ease I have left. Some people stash Homespun and then try to get rid of it; for some it's Red Heart. For me, it's Wool-Ease:

Yarn exhibited: A shit-ton of Wool-Ease in every imaginable color. Most of it is Worsted, a little bit of it is Sport.

Exhibited along with the yarn is the cutest Kleenex box cover ever made. I could try to make something out of crochet or plastic canvas, but I couldn't beat that, and I don't think I can be bothered to try. That Kleenex box cover comes from New Zealand (you can't really see it, but there is a New Zealand logo on its front). Those are two of the sixteen to eighteen sheep that came back with us from New Zealand in 2005. :) Yes, I brought home a flock. (Also some souvenir yarn. Most of it is still in the stash. I almost don't want to knit with it! Some of it is gorgeous, though — hand spun, even — so someday I'm sure I will.)

What am I gonna do with all that Wool-Ease?, you may be wondering. I'm going to make practice sweaters. I would like to make sweaters that look like they belong on a human body, and this is where I'm gonna start. The Bog Jacket 2 is actually part of this project, being made out of (so far) two balls of Wool-Ease sportweight. (It will take about three by my current estimations… maybe a little more, maybe a little less.)