Stash Flashing Time

Some years back there was a Flash Your Stash meme doing the rounds of blogs. Since then I've dragged out all my stash and photographed it every six months. Yesterday I was recovering from aches and pains after painting the guest room, so I took all the yarn out of the bookcase and spread it on the daybed.



Well, most of the yarn. I have a small stash of acrylic for 'emergencies' and another box of project leftovers, but since those yarns aren't waiting to be used I don't consider them 'stash'.



Each of the bookcase hollows holds one large and one small tub. I have eight of these 'pairs', plus one underbed storage box full of Inca, the yarn for Starsky and the s'n'b handspun.

A year ago I had four pairs of tubs and enough extra yarn from an adopted stash to fill another two.

So I think I can say the stash has increased by a third to a half in the last year. That's a relief, as I was worried it might have doubled. I'm pleased to find most of the new yarn isn't useless odd balls or yarn bought only because it was cheap. I've developed good yarn buying habits.

Stash flashing advantages:

* It stirs up enthusiasm for the projects I want to knit (though the pressure of wanting to knit them all NOW can be a disadvantage)

* It sometimes results in seeing ways of combining yarns that I hadn't thought of before

* Skills I've developed in the last six months had me considering new ways of using stash yarn

* I realised I need to ease off buying knitting yarn as I want to buy more warp yarn and haven't got anywhere to put it.

* I found some yarn to offer up if the s'n'b has a swap

* Time allows you to realise you really don't love some yarns, and cull them

* I updated my stash spreadsheet, which has proven to a be surprisingly useful tool when wondering if I have enough of something for a project that just caught my eye

* Breathing in yarn fumes is a inexpensive, harmless way to enhance your mood

The disadvantages include rampant startitis, brought about by too much stirring up of yearning to start all the great projects I have lined up, enhanced by guilt at having not started them for so long, and exacerbated by the knowledge that once they're out of the stash, the weight comes off the total on the spread sheet and everything fits better in the storage tubs.

Cursing designers

I haven't posted for a few days, basically because everything crafty seems to be kicking my butt at the moment.

First the Pirate Mittens put the boot in. I finished the first one bar the thumb and discovered that the cuff was bigger than the hand, and the hand was too small to comfortably fit my hand in it. I'd also swapped the sides I knit the yarns from - one on the left continental style, one on the right english style - three times and my tension must be different for the two styles as the black stitches were bigger or smaller depending which side I knit it on.

To top it off, I realised the pattern chart is shaded in reverse. The white squares are meant to be black, and the black are meant to be white. WTF? Is this some sort of piratey joke? So I frogged the entire mitten and started again, using smaller needles for the cuff and larger ones for the hand, and always keeping the yarns on the same side.



It looks much better in 'reverse'.

As you know from my last post the Swirled Pentagon Pullover was doing some butt kicking of it's own. After it had dried I tried it on.



If I hoick up the sleeves to the position they're supposted to be in, the bat wing problem is almost non-existant. So I think I can safely conclude that the too-large pentagons are the problem. And they're too big solely due to the fact that the designer (or editor) hasn't a clue about US to metric conversion.

To fix this I should knit up a separate pentagon on 5mm needles and see if it comes out the right size. If not, I'll knit it on 4.5 mm needles. Then I'll have to unpick the top of the sleeves, unravel all the pentagons and knit them again.

I'm not quite up to facing that yet. I'm still at the cursing the designer stage. An what with the reversed out pirate mitten chart discovery on top, there's been much cursing of designers lately.

As if that wasn't enough, the weaving has been kicking my butt too.



After warping up the loom ready to weave some place mats out of the free handspun from s'n'b, I discovered that the stickiness of the yarn made the warp threads stick together, and it made for a very open weave. So I unwove what I'd done, skeined up all the yarn again, and washed it. When it was dry I tried again. No stickiness problem, but still an overly open weave. I'm thinking maybe this needs a more widely spaced warp. Maybe in linen or cotton instead of the wool I'd used. Since I figured this was going to take some experimentation, I'm not minding the butt kicking.

But the trouble is, warping up up the loom takes time, and taking off a warp and tying it back on later takes even more time. Better to start something else. So I took out some purple varigated yarn my mum bought me in New Zealand last year, for my birthday.



I'm thinking pillows, or a topper for the sideboard, to go in the guestroom.

And the guest room! It's kicking my butt too. Just how many coats of Vivid Orange does it take to get a good flat colour? Sheesh!

More Books!

As he promised, the guy at Artisan Books rang to say one of the books I wanted was in, so the beau and I headed into town. I've started the Yarn Harlot book and already had many a chuckle. I also picked up a book on book binding:



Which I'm planning to use when putting my New Zealand trip photo album together. After my UK trip album experience of getting a few hundred photos developed, discovering the developer had cropped the tops and bottoms off them (having not told me they were the 'wrong' proportions), getting another hundred redone somewhere else, then discovering I was being ripped off and could have them done cheaply at Hardly Normal, then buying two expensive albums and spending hours and hours applying photo corners and sticking down labels... I decided there had to be a better way to make nice trip albums.

The solution, I've decided, is to arrange multiple photos on A4ish sized jpegs and have enlargements done cheaply through a mail order photo enlargment company. I can have the photos any size or proportion I want and the labels can be typed onto the same page. Once processed I can then bind the sheets together myself.

I just need to stop knitting and get around to making the jpegs...

I got lots of knitting done over the weekend. There has been FOage. The Swirled Pentagon Pullover is done. And I'm angry. Angry, ropeable and annoyed. It fits very badly, and the fault is all due to an error in the pattern and, well, is there anyone out there who has spindly arms that never leave the sides of their body coupled with a disproportionally huge chest?



It's blocking right now. When it's dry I'll try it on again, take photos, and explain what went wrong.

Booooooooooooks

Finding ourselves in the northern suburbs of Melbourne the other day, the beau and I tracked down a few shops we hadn't visited before. My choice was Artisan Books. Oh. My. I could spend a LOT of money there.

I bought these:



One which is beautiful and inspiring, and the other which is amusing and educational. I'm eyeing the lemon gum out the front of our neighbour's house with renewed interest. And I have an even stronger itch to knit fair isle - more ambitious full sized fair isle garments.

I also learned that two books I've been itching to get - the Yarn Harlot's latest and Cat Bordhi's sock one - were on order. I so made arrangements for the manager to ring when they arrived, and told the beau to find a few more northernish Melbourne photography shops to put on his list.

Too Ambitious for Waiting Rooms

The final swirled pentagon of the Swirled Pentagon Pullover was added the other night. They have a habit of sticking out in the middle. I've heard this is typical of Norah Gaughan's motifs, and they usually settle down flat after blocking. I hope so. It will look a bit silly, otherwise.



Now I need to see if I can pick up and knit the sleeves downward - my preferred method these days. Anything to avoid seams.

Trying out fair isle knitting for my swap recipient's gift has given me a bit of an itch to knit more fair isle, so I've started on these:



I can see why some knitters become addicted to this sort of thing. Quick, utterly satisfying, and you feel so clever afterwards.

Sneak Peek

So what did I make my swap recipient instead? Here are some hints:

The Drapey Scarf

When I joined the Australian Knitters Ravelry Forum's We've Got You Covered swap I was hoping one of my recipient's requested item would allow me to do a bit of weaving. It turned one one of the requested items was a scarf, which was perfect. Inspired by Lolly's experiment in beating lightly in order to get a drapey fabric, I warped up the loom with some thin wool/cashmere yarn (though only about 5% cashmere), which I planned to dye in my recipient's favourite colour afterwards, and got weaving.

I have plenty of this yarn and I was pretty generous with the warp length. I got to worrying about the length as I worked. Would the recipient mind if the scarf ended up really long?

So I sent in a few decoy questions along with one about scarf length. And it turned out the recipient doesn't like long scarves, preferring really short ones.

Whoops.

The trouble with weaving is once something's on the loom, you have to finish it before you can start the next project. Good thing, then, that weaving is so fast! As I finished it I decided it would be either mine, or a gift, and I'd choose whether or not to dye it later.

I'm very happy with the result.



It's lovely and drapey.



I think I might keep it. But I can't decide if I'll leave it as it is or dye it. Perhaps I'll dye it with eucalyptus leaves...