I have finally finished the Suburban Wrap for my totally Knitworthy niece and popped it into the mail today. Check out this piece of wonderfulness!
I am so happy with the looks and drape of this wrap. Do you remember the Knitworthy niece? Here she is flashing the fabulous mitts that I made her last winter. Yep, that it winter in California in the background there. Green grass… how odd! We won’t even talk about that tree trunk next to her!
My niece saw the Suburban Wrap by Joji Locatelli on her facebook feed, shared the post with me, and the rest was history. As soon as I saw it I knew that this was a knit that was calling my name. I dug in the stash, sent her some yarn choices, and after finishing up some works in progress I cast on and got to work several weeks ago.
My niece loves color (did you notice her hair?), and as soon as I showed her this yarn combo it was the one. All of these yarns were already in the stash… win!
This project was just one chunk of fun knitting after another. So much fun, in fact, that I got into a little tendonitis trouble because I knit too long at a time as I raced along to get to the next color section. Lace. Stripes. Textured knitting. An interesting shape and rows that were a manageable stitch count. In other words, everything that a knitter’s heart could want. My project notes on Ravelry are here.
This afternoon I popped the wrap into a box and mailed it off to California where I hope it will be useful in the cool evenings to come. It made my heart happy to send it off. I can’t wait to hear that it has arrived safely.
Then I hit the yarn stash hunting for some yarn, in more sedate colors, to make one for myself.
Right at the start of this year I cleaned out my yarn stash and made myself face a brutal truth: there is a lot of yarn in there. Maybe more than I can use in my lifetime. Maybe I should start to make a conscious effort to decrease the size of my stash…
Behold the yarn stash.
Thus a New Year’s resolution was born: get at least 50 skeins of yarn out of the stash!! I made some basic rules, started a spreadsheet to track my progress, cast on some projects and got into action.
After 3 months I am happy to report that I have made some significant progress. Really, I’ve done a pretty good job of cleaning yarn out of the bins above. I’ve actually emptied two bins!!
I’ve made two pairs of mitts, these fabulous mitts above for a Knitworthy niece and a pair of thrummed mitts. Okay, these projects really were fussy and slowed me down. They were a lot of time and work, but will be prized possessions for years to come. Total skeins used: 2In the gloomy days of winter I whipped out two different cowls, a Clinkerbell cowl and this Dissent Cowl. Total skeins used: 3The big workhorses in stash depletion were two sweaters that took time to knit, but really ate up the yarn mileage. This Sturgill sweater and the Daelyn were both knit from the top down and were fast knitting once I hit the stockinette-in-the-round portions of the sweaters. Total skeins used: 12
Have you been keeping count? The above projects used up a whopping 17 skeins of yarn and there were some other small projects that used up 4 more skeins over the last three months; 2 shawls and a pair of socks.
Did you do the math? So far this year I have knitted my way through 21 skeins of yarn!! I am well on the pace to finish off 50 skeins before the end of the year.
Through all of this knitting my trusty feline sidekick (and taskmaster) has been at my side and on my knitting, kneading the fabric into shape (with his now cut off claws!) and chomping on my yarn.
Seriously. Every project I knit has pictures of him as close as he can get to the action. This is a shot of him on my Color Study shawl. So of course I made a little mouse using yarn from the Daelyn sweater.
So there it is. Three months. 21 skeins of yarn used up. Things are going well and I’m feeling pretty good about getting at least 50 skeins cleared from the stash.
It was with this cocky and self-assured “I-am-a-knitting-machine” attitude that I went to the Interweave Yarn Fest last week and hit the marketplace with my BKB Deb. Oops. You might say that I fell off the “buy no yarn” wagon.
I woke up this morning to a warm, sunny day and a cell phone full of alerts. Well, look at that! A weather alert had been declared overnight for my area.
But in sunny California my KNITWORTHY niece is rocking her new mitts that I made for her. Did you ever see a happier recipient of a knitted item? She posted the picture to Facebook last night and my phone was also full of reactions to her picture. That’s what I’m talking about! Knitworthy.
The panic was in full swing when I looked at my phone. The schools were already closed for tomorrow. The city was advising that I get essential supplies and that I should plan on staying home tomorrow. There was a note about taking care of animals and checking the furnace. The county sent a message warning that they would try to keep “snow route” roads open, but they couldn’t make any guarantees. By the afternoon the National Weather Service had put out a blizzard warning, and by this evening the weather forecasters were talking about a possible “bomb cyclone“.
Cats do not like snow!! They aren’t really sure what “bomb cyclones” are, but they can’t be good. Cats dislike “bomb cyclones” and blizzards even more than they dislike snow.
All right then… not a moment to spare! I sprang into action and hit the road. Essentials for the storm include: gas for the car, groceries (including salmon and avocadoes… I believe in civilized snow emergencies!), a blood draw at Kaiser, and books from the library. I grabbed a Starbucks latte for a treat and headed home to get shovels and other gear ready for the storm. I now have yummy food, lots of projects, and good books to keep me company. Bring it on, Mother Nature, I am ready to go. MacKenzie, not so much, but that is the way it is for cats, I’m afraid.
MacKenzie and I have been working on my Sturgill sweater while watching the weather reports, and it is looking good!See. Looking good! I’ve taken the body off the needles and am knitting the sleeves right now because… yarn chicken worries. Once the sleeves are done I can blend the remaining yarn artfully to get the length I want.Tonight all is still calm and the storm is still just a dream waiting to happen…
I’m knitting like crazy on the sweater this evening and have several shows queued up for me on the DVR. I’m thinking that I’m in for a few days of prime knitting weather.
Yippee!
You all be safe out there!
PS: Did you wonder what I had to do with the shovel to get it ready for the snowstorm? Why, bring it inside, of course, so it would be warm when I spray it with Pam later for no-stick snow shoveling. We knitters are canny about spring snow storms…
Yarn, Books & Roses 