Baby steps

Last week at knitting my friend Sharon was doing her practical work in order to become a colour reader. Always up for a go at new things, Sharon read my cards and all the colours pointed to one thing: my stash is holding me back.

As the last post shows, the stash in the living room is huge! And thats only the tip of the iceberg. Sharon suggested that I move yarn that doesn't make my hear sing. After hearing this shocking suggestion, shedding a little tear or two, I agreed to try to cull the stash.

Its actually quite easy to let go. Even after sitting and thinking about it for a few minutes, I was able to come up with a list of yarns that I was happy enough to move out of the house.... and here it is.

start small

It took a whole 10 minutes to pull the yarn out of its various nooks and crannies and be piled up on the floor. A quick whatsapp chat later and half the yarn already has a new home, the rest will be brought to knitting tomorrow and, if there's still some left over, it'll go straight to the charity shop.

Its leaving tomorrow, never to return!!!

Once upon a time

There was a knitter who loved yarn. She loved yarn so much that the house was coming down with it! She decided, with a heavy heart, to start Cold Sheeping.
Many years passed. She stopped blogging so she could concentrate on knitting down her stash. Alas, she was just kidding the world and herself. The stash increased….decreased…..increased and decreased again.
By this time, she has three separate stash locations – at the top of the stairs, underneath the stairs and in the living room.  Being a knitter, she doesn’t blame herself, she blames The Summer.  It was during The Summer that the living room stash started to grow….and by September it was definitely out of control!
The knitter decided that “enough was enough!” and it was HAVE to be dealt with. Friends encouraged her to have a serious purge, but no, she couldn’t do that. She’d just have to knit it all up.
So here it is, the living room stash in all its glory:

Looks harmless, doesn’t it.  Well this monster can be divided into 3 categories.

Caegory 1: I know what I’m doing with you!

This cheeky selection will become socks, washcloths, hats, a shawl and a little jumper or two.  The knitter reckons that this category (apart from the shawl  that is) can and should be knitted up quickly enough. Plans are in place and she just needs time.


Category 2: ALL the kits

One of these kits pictured (and another that escaped) were purchased in August while on holiday. The knitter thought the little boy kit was so nice that she’d go back and get the pink one – there is a flurry of babies and one never knows when one will need pink! It was while the purchasing of the pink kit was taking place that the evil sales lady brought out all the Not one to resist a bargain, the knitter took them all -  well, hats and scarves are just so quick aren’t they!
Once category 1 is completed, this selection will be next on the hit list.

Finally, we have category 3: What on earth was I thinking!

Yup, a miscellaneous category. There are inklings of ideas with some of these yarns, and other will be paired up with yarn from the top of the stairs stash.


But baby steps -  one skein at a time and I’m sure our intrepid knitter will clear the living room of the invading yarns!

I would forgive you for thinking that I knit nothing but dishcloths…

like these for example

But I don’t. I just use dishcloths as a bit of mindless knitting. The 2nd and 3rd set I knitted for a friends fundraiser. Unfortunately no one liked the red/green set enough to buy it so the friend made her husband buy it for her and she loves it.

In April, my brothers girlfriend made an off-hand remark about wanting a rainbow cushion, a stripey rainbow cushion. So unbeknown to her, my little sister and I went out the next day and hunted down some rainbow acrylic. Athough she had asked for stripes, all I could see were millions of ends to weave in, so rainbow coloured yarn was located.

I’m really very proud of myself for this cushion. It involved colourwork and charts, two things I’ve never been good at. Each row of hearts took an hour, so it really took a while to knit and finish. I have to say that she loves it though which makes it all worthwhile.

   

Another non-dishcloth is this little Pebbles vest. I’ve knitted another one too (in orange) but it remains photoless at the minute. After much deliberation, the knitting group decided that ladybirds were unisex enough and since then every button has been a ladybird! With the leftover yarn I made a little beanie.

 

I’ve a few more wips that just need their ends sorted out, but for now its back to the dishcloths I’m afraid.

Not a dishcloth

For a change, a project that isn’t a dishcloth. Don’t panic though, I’ve more cloths knitted up but thats for another day.

My brother and his girlfriend are expecting a little one this winter… so it obviously needs a sleeping bag cozy thing.  The buttons are actually sewn on straight, not too sure what happened there, lol.

Anyway, the pattern for the baby cozy is free although I have it in the book which includes instructions for the easy access flap at the bottom. I know my colour choices are a bit random but the parents-to-be are a bit random themselves.

A little destash

Despite my attempts to NOT buy yarn this year, my stash has increased by epic proportions since 15 April. Although I have Ravelry, I also keep a speadsheet in work so when I feel weak I tot up the yardage and convert it into miles. The current figure was 380 odd balls and 51.7 miles. A bit too huge for comfort.

Thankfully last night I was chatting with two new recent knit night additions, who being poor students, didn’t have a stash. I offered to have a rummage and give them the stuff I no longer wanted.

And here it is. It mightn’t look like much, but there’s lace, sock, sport, DK, aran and chunky weights in there, so the yardage fairly mounts up.

Yardage totals 12,976.5 yards!!

Staggeringly thats 7.4 miles!!!!!

I’m thrilled, as are the knitters who are taking it off my hands.

And there’s more….

As I mentioned yesterday, I was on a little bit of a washcloth kick, and its not over yet!

After the scrappy cloths, I went back to a pattern and this time it was double bump which I knitted before years ago as Christmas presents. I never did get any comments on whether they were a nice gift or not, but its a simple pattern and knitted as per the instructions. Despite the yarn being aran weight and not worsted, its a fairly decent size.

Following the patterned cloth, I wanted something mindless so made up my own. To be fair, you can’t really concentrate on a pattern when NCIS is on now, can you?

This was swiftly followed by my own personal washcloth pattern hell. This is the second time I’ve knitted this cloth and the second time I’ve made a right mess of it.  It’s not hard, not in the slightest, but I just can’t get it.  The cloths are robust, sturdy and firm. They’re fantastic. But for the life of me I just seem to get it wrong every time. I will try again….. just not yet.

The name of my current nemesis? Chinese waves dishcloth.

 

In the above photo you can just make out near the top where its not quite right…. and again near the bottom of the photo. Some”thing” went wrong and continued to be wrong for a while and then, quite suddenly, fixed itself again. That “thing” is my brain. I’m sure I’ll get me head around this simple pattern eventually. I’ve plenty more rico cotton to try!

A new craze

To celebrate my 100th day cold sheeping my lovely hubby bought me yarn. Yes, while not quite grasping the concept of the no new yarn, he did a really nice thing. So I decided that everyone should get a new washcloth.

The first cloth, in bottle green rico cotton, is the Waffle stitch cloth and knitted as pattern, needles n all. However, because the yarn isn’t a worsted weight, its a bit on the narrow side but still useful and quick enough to knit.

The second cloth was just a simple square I made up myself, in a nice light green…

While the third was just a stripey scrappy affair… .

And yes… there are more but I think 3 a day is enough to bore anyone!