Lessons from the Stashdown

 

Photo from Learn2Knit

What am I learning from my stash-down, well sometimes liking and wanting aren't really the same thing. Not every yarn needs to come home with me. It might be better if I leave some yarns which don't work with my overall knitting plan wherever they already happen to be. 

You can never go wrong with good basic yarns.

I should donate more of what I don't want rather than try to force it. I did realize startitis is often a message from your unconscious it's time to let something go.

The thought that someday someone else has to deal with all that yarn if I don't is becoming much more disturbing. 

On the positive side I really do have some lovely yarns to keep me busy for the next while between design projects.

I truly love the design challenge of making something great from what's turning up while I'm sorting through the stash. See my post here on what I've been doing. 

One pattern four ways:http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/ruth-kettering-wrap

Social Knitting Inspiration Part 3

I finished the green and ivory stash buster project from this post. 

It made for easy knitting during the Christmas holidays, always a good idea between the cycle of cooking, cleaning, entertaining and staying out late to socialize. It turned out like this: 

I used a combination of garter stitch and 2 x 2 rib. I double stranded the yarns in several combinations and then knit one row of each combo over a 3 row sequence. I also added short rows in the garter section so the bottom is wider. After I added the fringe I weighed the left overs and I had about 40 grams. Mission accomplished on my stash down.

Then I needed something else easy to work on. Of course I had forgotten about the blue project. (Next step, put getting organized on the New Year resolution list.) I started and finished this:

I'd been wanting to try out this construction method for a while and had written out the basic instructions in a notebook I keep for that purpose. (Fortunately, I could find the notebook.) You are only seeing half the shawl because I couldn't fit it in the photo when it was open. Both sides end in that spiral and it's folded at the centre.

It's all in fingering weight yarns and does that curling thing on the edges when you let them hang free. It happens because there are so many increases made in a very small area. 

After that one, I started swatching for another stash down project. So far I like that one so much it could become a pattern so you may see it sometime in the future. Now I have to go find the bag with the blue and green yarns and put it somewhere accessible so it will be ready when I get back to it. 

Tossing the Stash

Sometimes we just can't escape our past. I'm still working on the great stash down. That was what prompted my previous post on the scarf craze. Now I'm looking at good yarns but often in small amounts and different weights. I tried to bundle some of them up for donation and then fell into the trap of feeling wasteful. This is where my past comes in. My paternal grandparents came to Canada from Scotland in the late 1920s. My grandmother came from a family who while they weren't wealthy, they were hard working merchants and enjoyed the fruit of their efforts. She was the oldest daughter in a large family and all of the kids worked in the family business at very young ages. She never got over the depression. She was frugal to a fault. She lived with us from the time I was 10 so she had many opportunities to share her concerns about money. It also didn't help when my husband saw some partial balls (too small to donate) in the garbage and started teasing me that maybe I should keep it because someday I might not be able to afford yarn.

Later that day I attended the Fluevog Knit Night.

I had my social knitting project to work on since my current design project isn't very portable. My friend was working on some complex lace and cursing herself for not having something more appropriate for social knitting. My project is relatively small so it won't last much longer. 

I'm on the garter stitch short row section of this pattern: 

http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/the-martine-dubois-crescent-scarf

I'm knitting it in this gorgeous yarn from a trip to Rhinebeck a few years ago. 

I realized this morning while sorting my stash that the yarns I'm not happy about not using could be used for some very simple social knitting projects, either in garter or something equally simple. I started grouping for colour and I wanted to share a super simple trick for combining colours. 

See this, it's Malabrigo Rios in the colour 856 Azules. They already developed a great colour palette that I can use as inspiration. 

 

Here's a few other yarns in my stash that fall in the same colour range.

The trick...all you do is hold every yarn up against the original multicolored yarn, if it looks good together to your eye put it in the use pile. If it doesn't, it goes elsewhere. I'll probably double up that lace weight. I'm thinking a maybe a cowl or a cape-let mixing the yarns together. I have more yarns than I show in the photo. I'll poke around on Pinterest and Ravelry for some inspiration and I'll let you know how it goes later.