A Little Yarn On The Side

Or thereabouts. Someone asked me how many skeins I have left in my stash after removing 220.  I'm using Ravelry, and don't actually mark off yarn that I've used on an unfinished project, so their spreadsheet shows 705 skeins left in my stash, but I know that at least 7 of those have been used up, so I'm under 700 skeins.  If I use them up at the 2008 speed, I'd be totally without yarn in about 6 years--in the strictly hypothetical sense, of course, because if I ever got down to having enough yarn to fit in ONE tub, I'd be buying up yarn so quickly that my credit card numbers would probably melt completely off my little card.  So getting down to no yarn is just completely out of the question.  BUT, if I continue Cold Sheeping until the end of 2011, I could be down to under 600 skeins, which sounds like a nice number.  Maybe that will be my stopping point?  I admit, 500 is a nice number as well--heck, I have nothing against 100 to be honest--I just don't th...

I started "cold sheeping" on January 1, 2008.  Since then--aside from some year-end reward yarn purchases--I have been knitting exclusively from stash.  I admit, I was starting to feel like I haven't even made a dent in my stash, but on a whim I recently tallied up my stash-busting to date: Today I used up my 200th ball of stash yarn. YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! No matter how you look at it, 200 skeins of yarn is a lot of yarn.  Want to know how much 200 skeins of yarn actually is?  It would look something like this: From a how-much-closet-space-it-took-up point of view, this would be quite a conservative picture as I have knit up all my really bulky-weight yarns, and a good chunk of this pile is laceweight because it is the easiest bin to get to, but it is STILL an amazing amount of yarn.  No wonder the stash didn't all fit into the sewing room! I believe the planned/allowed purchases would come to no more than 35 skeins, so even with that, for the last two and ...

Sweaters?  What sweaters? I wish there was a good way to photograph a Pi shawl without taking it off the needles--which I am far too lazy to do--but this isn't too bad for an in-progress picture.  In some ways, this is a lot of the fun, because I don't even know exactly what it will look like when it's finished and blocked.  At least I picked a really pretty way to fall dreadfully behind on the 100-projects-a-year goal.......

because that will make the math easier.  I'm halfway (sort of) through the year, and my stats stand thus:  (I'm always so excited when I can use the word "thus."  It makes me feel like those 4 years getting an English degree were a well thought out plan of action ) Yards of yarn used:  7050.5 Skeins of yarn used:  35.35 Yards of fabric used:  49.315 Projects finished: 53 (but there were actually 51 as of July 1) Which (easy math time) puts me on target to end the year with approximately: Yards of yarn used:  14,000 Skeins of yarn used:  70 Yards of fabric used:  98 Projects finished: 102 Not bad, I suppose--I'd have used up more of the stash than I did last year, but not as good as what I'd like to call the Great Yarn Reduction of 2008 (19,183 yards and 118 skeins).  However.....the year is young and this time the new part for Jeeves is being shipped from Kentucky--which is three times as far as where the last one came fr...

It's July 8, and I have just under half the year to go and just under half the projects to go.  So what am I doing with my spare time today? Working on the new Pi shawl.  As I need a little over 8 finished projects per month, what could be a more foolish idea than launching into a 1500-yard lace project--except, of course, starting a new quilt, which mercifully I haven't done.  I'm not using Elizabeth Zimmermann's suggested pattern.  Not that there's anything wrong with it, but I've seen so many Pi shawls on Ravelry that I needed something different.  AND, since I'm making it up anyway, it makes a great portable project:  no pattern means no pattern to cart around.  The color is actually a bit more accurate in this picture but the pattern so far might be easier to see in this one Not that I shouldn't be working on Andy's birthday sweater--or cleaning the house, for that matter--but Pi shawls are amazingly addictive.  I don't know why--pi as ...

So, you might have guessed that I didn't have the greatest holiday weekend.  Surprisingly, the Knitting Gods didn't think a broken "newly repaired" sewing machine & a cold were quite enough.  I ran into a snag on the Baby Reefer Jacket which, to be fair, is completely my own fault, but annoying just the same.  I decided to make the two fronts & back all in one piece, and just divide for the sleeves.  Simple, no?  Actually, no.  It turns out that the sweater is made with drop sleeves, so there I was knitting away, when I finally double checked the pattern and realized that I was going to end up with one great big piece of knitting with no armholes.  AND, there are no schematics for the pattern, so I have no idea how far down the body the sleeve will actually reach, so I decided to break at a reasonable spot for the sleeves and hope for the best.  I can either steek or sew a bit if I'm off, but I'm really hoping it will be the sewing option...

So...Jeeves is not so much fixed.  In fact, more things worked on Jeeves before I took him in.  I'm not even sure the original problem was fixed because most of the buttons don't work now, and without them, I can't test it.  Color me unamused.  He goes back to the dealer tomorrow for what I hope will be a shorter stay.  It could be that not everything was connected after they replaced the circuit board, but that still leaves the glaring fact that the repair guy didn't bother to test ANYTHING, which is irritating to say the least.  No referrals for them! THEN, in case that wasn't annoying enough, we had a 3-day weekend with beautiful weather....and I got a cold.   I guess that works out okay--I'd have been annoyed if after Jeeves being gone two weeks I couldn't sew because I had a cold, or if I was feeling great and had a sewing machine that could do less than half of its functions because of a repair guy who doesn't check his work, so as long as I ...