Stash

Ravelry, that wonderful website for spinners, crocheters, and knitters that has now gotten over three million members from all over the world, has a feature that allows members to enter their stash.  No, not that stash...yarn stash.  It took hours and hours to do this, even though I have a relatively small stash compared with other members.

Large stash:

Large stash:

Large stash:

My stash:

Yep. That's it.  Teeny tiny.

And yet it took all day to enter it into Ravelry.  I thought at one point that I was finished, and then I remembered---

Sock Yarn.

Now knitters know that sock yarn doesn't officially, legally count as stash.  It's true.  But I did want to know what I had, and oh, my, I had more sock yarn than I had realized.  But it's ok.  I love knitting socks.  I just need to move someplace cold enough to wear all of the socks that I can knit.

I have mentioned before that I think all computer technologies are amazing and magic.  I learned that there is a function on the stash page that takes all of the stash information and automatically enters everything into a spreadsheet.

This is a screenshot of part of my spreadsheet:

The thing is, I have no idea why I would WANT a spreadsheet of yarns.

to swan

My cat has been swanning about the neighborhood since he returned from having a bath at the veterinarian's.

There is nothing true about that sentence. I have always wanted to use swanning about in a sentence but have never had any occasion to, so I decided to just make something up. It's Old English, and I'm older-ish, so maybe that's why I like it so much.

But, speaking of my cat, while I heart my cat, I don't want to wear my cat, if you get my drift. However, if I did want to, here is a business that could make it happen: Pet Yarn Chic.

You can send them your pet's hair/fur/whatever, and they will make it into yarn. Ick, I say, but whatever floats your boat. And if you don't knit, Pet Yarn Chic will supply someone to knit for you.

If my cat would like to swan about, he can; I won't be stopping him to collect his hair to turn into yarn.....

Another Addict Waiting to be Born

I recently received an e-mail from my niece, M, who complimented me on the hat I knit for Elizabeth. She also commented on other projects I have written about on my blog, and used lots of words like gorgeous, beautiful, I love it and so on.

Then my favorite niece said that she would like to learn to knit and that maybe I could teach her the next time we get together. Well, yes I can! However, she lives in Florida, has two children, and I live in Georgia. Getting together anytime soon may not happen and so I am searching high and low for a knitting CD or DVD (I never can tell the difference) that I bought a few years ago when I was trying to refresh my memory on various knitting skills. I can't find it. I'm a big believer in a place for everything and everything in its place, and I am really, really frustrated that I can't find this CD/DVD. I thought that maybe I had sent it to older daughter when she started knitting, but she claims that I didn't and that she doesn't have it. Hmmmm....

I can direct M to the web for all sorts of knitting videos and they may help. But she will be in big trouble if she does take up knitting. She said that she sees beautiful yarns at Michaels, and wishes she could use them for something. I know there are some pretty yarns there, but WAIT till she sees what is in specialty yarn shops. All the beautiful Noro, Araucania, Be Sweet, Rowan, and too-many-others-to-name yarns. Once she sees those, and breathes in all those yarn fumes, she will be an addict.

So I'll keep searching for the CD/DVD and keep encouraging her to look up online instructional videos. I'm nothing if not an enabler!

[Fair warning: Do NOT go to any knitting/sheep and wool festivals with me unless you want to come home with lots of yarn and yarn accessories (with a nod to King of the Hill).]

Just So My Daughters Will Have Something New to Make Fun of Me For

"You are such a knitting nerd," is what they'll say, I'm betting. Anyway, the group of women I went to SAFF with found this on day one, and when I arrived for day two, our first stop of the second day was to find the booth where these were sold. I scored the last one!

What is it? Why, it's a yarn keeper bracelet, that's what it is!
It lets you knit while you are on the run, or keeps the yarn near you if you don't want it rolling all over the room. It also keeps the cat from playing with the ball of yarn because you wear the thing on your wrist and the yarn is not on the floor; it's in your lap.

Now, I was caught up in the excitement that is SAFF and didn't stop to consider that I never knit on the run, or even in public very often. The only line I've stood in lately (and I wished that I had brought my knitting) was to vote early - note the Obama bracelet. My cat rarely pays attention to my knitting. I don't know when I will use this, but it is clever, at least in theory. My three friends and I aren't the only ones who thought so - the booth was sold out when I bought the last yarn keeper bracelet early on day two of the three-day event.

So, go ahead and laugh. I may even join you.

Mistakes Were Made

Many, many mistakes were made. First, there was this:The pattern calls for a garter stitch edge but I had purled a row on the back instead of having knit it. My knit night friends told me not to rip out the whole thing, but to just put pins in each of the stitches that needed to be ripped back and then repair each column row by row. OK. I put in the pins. And blessed FSM that I had been using Knit Picks interchangeable needles. I could just unscrew the needle itself from the cord and put a stopper on the cord.

Then I started ripping out one column (probably not the correct term) at a time. This is knitted in two strands of yarn at once, and one of them is mohair yarn. Very difficult to rip out. I once stopped knitting for about ten years because I was stuck on a black mohair sweater and wouldn't let myself start another project until I finished that one. (Knitters, stop laughing!) I never finished that sweater, but that's another story for another time. I am a knitting coward; I am terrified to frog anything, and I have never done this type of repair before.
But as I said, mistakes---plural---were made. After one hour, I finally got two columns put back together and then noticed that I had skipped one whole row of yarn. So out came the two columns. I re-did the first two columns and slowly finished the third and fourth. Partway through the fourth, I came across a strand of yarn not attached to anything. A cut end! Where this came from I have no idea, but that end sabotaged the rest of the repair. I found the other cut end, knotted the two together, and decided to stop before I did any more damage.
It is repaired to the best of my ability. I know I should consider this a learning experience, but I swear to DOG, what I have learned is: next time this sort of thing happens, I will call it a "design element" and move on.

Stash Hoarder? Not Me.

I do not have very much stash. (See below) For those non-knitters out there, "stash" is yarn you have in storage for projects you may not even have come up with yet. This is an embarrassing amount of stash, not because there is so much, but because there is so little. Most self-respecting knitters have lots and lots of stash, so much stash that they hide it throughout their homes---under beds, in closets, in basements and attics, and other places they think their significant others will never see it.
Mine all fits in ONE container:
One 13" by 21" by 7" container. My knitter friends would laugh at the idea that I even consider such a small amount of yarn to be stash.

My sock stash:

My sock stash will eventually make nine pairs of socks. Again, my knitter friends would laugh.

There are people who are hoarders. I am not one of them. When I see "professional organizers" on HGTV, I hear them say that anything you haven't used in one/two years, get rid of. Some members of my family claim that my philosophy is that if I haven't used it in a day or two, I want to get rid of it. NOT TRUE... After older daughter was married, my s-i-l told her that he thought I was trying to get rid of everything in my house, box by box, by shipping it to their house. Again, NOT TRUE. Isn't there some sort of statute of limitations on how long adult children can store stuff at their parents' home?

Older granddaughter is now reading Nancy Drew books and I found a lot of them this weekend in my basement. They belong to my younger daughter, who lives in LA, and I left her a phone message asking if I could ship them off to older granddaughter. Before she could even call back, I had the books all boxed up and labeled to be mailed. When she did call back, she warned me that the Nancy Drew books she had were for middle-school or high-school readers, not for almost-eight-year olds. Too late! They will go to the Post Office today, and then my older daughter can figure out what to do with them.

Box by box by box by box.....

Finished Objects

Yay! Two projects finished---finally! After spending two months knitting a pair of socks, I was able to get busy on two other projects-one, the dreaded beaded scarf, and the other, a scarf I had bought the yarn for about four months ago. It was nice to knit on something other than size two needles for a change.

I like the beaded scarf, and knitting it was much easier than the beading process was. Sixteen-hundred beads on yarn a bit too thick for the holes in the beads---not fun at all! I used the kitchener stitch to graft the two ends together, and it didn't turn out as well as I had hoped. The seam is quite visible and since the scarf could conceivably be worn with either side out, the seam detracts from one side a bit. I know (now) that the kitchener wasn't designed to work with a combination of knitted and purled stitches.

The second project is a scarf (Horndal Scarf from Noro Revisited by Cornelia Tuttle Hamilton) and it's an easy project. The garter stitch sections are knitted in Noro Kureyon and the ribbed sections are knitted in Noro Blossom yarn. As always, Noro colors are gorgeous, but I don't like the sudden surprise of knots, especially knots that cause a sudden shift in color. When I use Noro in the future, I will re-wind it into balls so that I can look for knots and color shifts before I knit.

Next project? I am starting on a sweater for grandson, who will be two this months. I bought that yarn last fall to make him a sweater for Christmas. Ooops......

Oops...

This past weekend, I went to Austin to visit my wonderful, perfect, gorgeous and funny grandchildren (and their parents). I had a great time just watching and listening to them. Yesterday we stuffed them in the hot car (it was HOT in Austin-over 100 every day, and one day, even 105!!!) to take them to lunch, and then to a new yarn shop in town. It's called Gauge and it's great! Lots of gorgeous yarns to pet and drool over. The woman there was very nice, and didn't even seem to mind 22-month old grandson "admiring" the yarn. I told older daughter that she was to stop me from buying any more yarn, but she must not have been listening, because, oops, I ended up with this:
It's Lorna's Laces hand-dyed Shepherd Sock Yarn (80% superwash wool, 20% nylon) and it is really, really soft and the colors are ...well, you can see the colors. My daughter and I each bought the same colorway, and will make socks out of it. Great minds think alike.

However, I REALLY had not intended to buy yarn, but resistance was futile. One of the best reasons to knit socks is that no matter where you are, if you see a sock yarn you love, you know how much you need. The same is not true of sweaters and other items, so you end up either buying a new pattern in order to buy the yarn, or you leave the yarn in the shop for another knitter. But you can ALWAYS buy sock yarn!

And if you live in Austin, and love this particular colorway in Lorna's Laces, too late---we beat you to it and bought it all. Sorry...

The Dumbest Idea I Have EVER Had

I don't know what possessed me. Last week at Knit-Nite at the LYS, I saw a beautiful scarf. It had beads knitted into it, and I loved it. "What a great gift idea," I thought. And it is. I'm sure people I would knit them for would love them.

However, each scarf requires 1500 beads. FIFTEEN-HUNDRED!!!!! And how do these beads get in the scarf? Each of these FIFTEEN-HUNDRED beads is threaded onto the yarn, bead by bead, by hand. I've been at it for twenty minutes, I have about thirty beads on the yarn, and I've broken one needle already.

I am visiting older daughter in Austin this weekend, and I offered to watch her three children, to let her have absolute, complete peace and quiet so that she could string all these beads. She said "No," very emphatically.

So now I have NO idea how I am going to accomplish making this scarf. The only thing I can think of is to leave the beads, yarn, needles, and foam pad out on the dining room table, and then to work on it little by little, bead by bead.....for a very long time.