Hi. I’m Hannah.
The Mother of Cats has been a handful lately. Ever since she finished her last sweater she has been mooning around the house, reading books, and sadly sorting through her yarn stash. Seriously, she has been pulling out all of her yarn, making lots and lots of little piles with different colors, and then she carefully puts them all away (and I want to emphasize, she is really ignoring my needs while this is going on!!!) to only take them out a day later. WHAT IS GOING ON WITH THIS MOTHER OF CATS!!!! Seriously, I think that she may be a little broken right now.
I have to admit, those are nice colors. The Mother of Cats has lots of yarns that will go nicely with those colors, and she decided to pull them out of the stash and group them together. Then the trouble started: how much pink. Where did all the dark wine-colored yarns go. How much gold should go into the piles? Is this yard dark or light? Should there be purple? How much white is too much…
This is more than a little exhausting. Even Mateo is upset with the constant trips into the yarn stash!
Now she has finally made two big piles of yarn that are sorted into piles that are dark and light. Sounds like progress, right? No. This is the illusion of progress, because she is still worried about how to create a balanced sweater from all of those colors, and maybe she should put in some more crazy colors as pops, or… WHERE IS MY TUNA!!!! This is completely out of hand.
You have to admit that there is enough yarn here to make more than one sweater, but is she casting on a sweater? No, she is not…
She has been making little Sea Glass hats to color swatch different color combinations. To be frank, I think that she just likes to knit and knit, and she is having so much fun with the hats that the sweater is now in limbo. Eventually she will get through this (I hope) and move on to the sweater, and I think that she is slowly calming down and getting more confidence in this whole “mixing up lots of different colors from the stash” thing that is required by the sweater.
Last night she mentioned that there is a Sea Glass tee that would work better for warm weather… she thinks that she can use fingering yarn for the tee without using any of her PRECIOUS DK yarn. I don’t understand what the problem is… isn’t one catnip mouse pretty much the same as the others? Whatever. I do have some concerns about how this simultaneously out of control but also stuck on Sea Glass Island, wracked with indecision, phenomenon is progressing. Why can’t the Mother of Cats do anything the simple way? With her everything is so dang complicated!! Eventually there will be a sweater… I hope. And more catnip mice.
Sigh. I’m going to see if I can get the Mother of Cats to give me some kitty cookies. Bye.
This is Hannah, signing off.
>^..^<
Note from the Mother of Cats: The Winter Albina sweater finally got blocked and I’ve been wearing it every cool day for the last two weeks. This may be my favorite sweater for some time!
I’m off to cast on another Sea Glass hat… this is what happens when you love your yarn stash too much…
Yarn, Books & Roses 
I LOVE my Sea Glass tees. I have 3. I knit one with light and dark minis of speckles and variegated yarns. I knit a second doing 1×1 rows instead of 1×1 stitches so the fabric wouldn’t be double thick. I knit that with a skein of varigated yarn and a skein of solid yarn. Finally I knit a third in 1×1 but again used a skein of rainbow colors and a skein of black. I wear all 3 here in SW Florida!! I plan to knit a full sweater in 1×1 because I love it so much. Very colorful without being stripes. Highly, highly recommend.
Thank you for the really great ideas! One of the hats I made was done with one solid and one variegated yarn, and I kind of like how it turned out. Now I’m going to one with 1×1 rows to see how that changes the look. I’m getting more excited about just using the fingering yarn for a full sweater too once I’ve made a tee. I love the creative options.
A new problem that I’m dealing with in my overly creative and indecisive way is… the new yarns that I bought, the pinks and golds, would look really nice in a fair isle sweater… Now I’m wanting to hold them back, or to buy some MORE yarn so I can use them in the Sea Glass and still have them in the hypothetical fair isle (you know… I just need that solid background color… a Renaissance sweater might be the one to use those colors…). This is how my stash got so big…
Love it!!
“Indecision” is my middle name, and picturing a result based on a few color swatches is simply beyond me. Those hats are a great way to preview color combos while also creating something lovely and useful. Meanwhile that sweater is getting a lot of use in our crazy spring. At the rate we’re going, my thermostat will be worn out before summer arrives.
It is starting to look like a crazy spring! We had a severe thunderstorm Saturday with hail that sent the cats into hiding for hours. There was a strike so close to my house that it caused a power surge that made the oxygen machine alarm go off (even though the machine was turned off). Poor Mateo doesn’t like hail…
I heard the thunder to the south and got all excited about some real rain maybe coming our way. I’ve hardly ever heard real heavy claps of thunder since I’ve been here (20 yrs). But we got very little. In the form of snow. Just enough to make the grass solid white for a few hours. More snow coming Saturday, according to some of the forecasts I’ve seen. But who knows.
We had thundersnow!!!
Poor you, Hannah: life seems to be one long woollen misery for you, of late. Chin up, my beauty: one day – but possibly not till the oncoming summer has passed – she will finish your blanket.
Marilyn, I think you must have gone bonkers: I am unable to work out how many ENDS you will have to weave in.
Sighhh …
There is this technique for joining the yarns together called the magic know that I am going to become an expert at! It means… no ends to weave in. I’m kind of a worry wort, however, so I am going to put a tiny little amount of fray check on the knots to make sure they behave themselves!
That blanket makes my hands hurt something awful when I work on it. I think that it is the lace knitting… I had to put it away again. Hopefully my hands will recover again down the road.
I reckon you’re planning on a similar technique, Marilyn – even though this one’s crochet (sorry !).
So be aware that it’s gonna be really time-consuming, my lamb – and fiddly !!
and my hands are going to be really grumpy about it…
But you, woman of determination, are going to do it anyway !
Look after her, Hannah
so cute
Your collection of yarn reminds me of 31 flavors ice cream. Yummy! The hats are charming and practical and oh so pretty. I can’t wait to see what you create once you’ve settled on your color choices. Your kitties are a charming, if demanded, pair, but so it goes in the feline world. The sweater your’re wearing is lovely and it’s easy to see why its a favorite as it looks soft, roomy and warm.
The sweater is exactly what you said: soft, roomy and warm. I’m slowly getting closer to making the final decisions on how to tackle the sweater.
Goodness with all your existing pretty yarns I think you had a good combo. Now with new ones in the mix that’s added more decisions. I look forward to seeing what happens next and which get to be used in a tee.
If you are suggesting that I might have lost control here… you are probably right!
No not lost control, just made life a little bit tougher by adding in even more pretty yarns for a project that is supposed to be ideal for existing scraps and leftovers. They’ll all be stunning I’m sure.
It’s important to get these things right, otherwise you’ll never enjoy wearing the garment! So take all the time you need, and good for you for at least making wearable swatches 😁
Exactly!! I really love some of these yarns, and I hate to waste them by knitting them in a sweater that, by its design, requires me to cut the yarn into lots of short pieces that can’t be reused if all doesn’t work out! I am drawn to the sweater because it lets me use up yarn in the stash that isn’t enough for a project on its own, but I don’t want to waste them on something that I will hate!
I totally get it! I really enjoyed making my Seaglass and had tons of otherwise unloved yarns that were perfect for using up. But you have to be sure before you commit full skeins to it!
It sounds like a fun way to play with color, but I fully understand the indecision!
I kinda like the fort made out of cardboard boxes. Seems like something previous cats of mine would have loved.
Lovely to see Hannah and her Fortress Boxonia! I have been playing around with ideas for Seaglass sweaters as well. It’s such a cool pattern! Can’t wait to see what you do with yours 🙂
Hannah and Mateo, have I got a job for you! My daughter-in-law gave me a little book: “Crafting with Cat Hair: Cute Handicrafts to Make with Your Cat” by Kaori Tsutaya (translated from the Japanese). All my cat hair is mixed with dog hair. Yours, on the other hand …