A Little Yarn On The Side

The blue sweater is now all one piece and the raglan sleeve shaping has begun, which has used up no less than THREE 175-yard balls of yarn, leaving me just short of 4,000 yards of yarn for the year so far.  That does, of course, include the chucking of 880 yards in the form of a shawl with issues, but it also includes a ball of yarn that didn't count because it had already been knit and frogged once before and has to be frogged and reknit again, so it almost balances out.  Whew!  And that 3 ball difference is going to make such  a difference when trying to get all the yarn back INTO the sewing room........... Which, by the way, is painted! The odd smudges on the green wall are either reflections of something or something on the lens, not actually on the wall.  2 green walls and two in "dried stem."  I just love how it turned out. While everything (mostly) is out of the sewing room, we decided it would be a good time for me to play around wit...

Finding out one might have a 12-year supply of yarn can be pretty darn motivating, it turns out.  We now have a new Christmas ornament from newly discovered yarn that I'm actually pretty excited to have found as I haven't seen anything quite like this being currently sold.  (Warning:  there may be many pathetic attempts made on this blog to present the Great Yarn Stash as a good  thing.) There are also two new washcloths, or rather one and as much of a second as I could get out of the last of the yarn.   That finishes up a 603-yard ball of yarn I bought just over a year ago, which gives me 57 items in the "all used up" tab and gives me a little boost in the yardage tally.  I'd been trying to guess how much yarn each of the dishcloths and tribbles was using up, but I was obviously wrong unless one of these two washcloths involved 200 yards of yarn, so I got to make an adjustment.  Yay!!! In celebration (and to make sure I could be knitting ...

Abb y brought up an interesting question about my last post:  Have I achieved SABLE, would I want to knit exclusively from stash for the next several years, and do I have yarn that I should give away?  After having schlepped all my yarn around the house, it does feel  like I have a life supply of yarn, especially since these were holding up my stereo in the sewing room, and when opened revealed yarns that I was relatively were not all represented on Ravelry.  I was happy to find that SOME of the yarn was indeed already accounted for, and have spent a fair bit of the morning adding most of the new yarn to Ravelry.  According to the latest figure, I have just under 190,000 yards of yarn.  I wish I could say I thought, "Well, haven't seen it for a while so I can part with it," but I didn't.  When I found a pretty large amount of Lion Brand Wool-Ease worsted, my reaction was, in fact, "Yippee!"  It's one of my favorite yarns for scarve...

I'll admit, I was wavering a bit on the continued cold sheeping.  It's fun to buy yarn.  I like buying yarn.  I had even started to ask myself, "What would be the harm?" So, it was a perfect weekend to have to lug around a large percentage of the yarn stash.  This: is now next to my bed, which is sort of like having a big burly bouncer-type man at the door to a yarn shop, since most of my yarn is bought online.  It looms over me out of the corner of my eye--just a little bit scary--and so far has kept me from even LOOKING at yarn online. This: is Andy's side of the bedroom.  Perhaps less frightening, but I think it makes a pretty good case for not buying any more fabric for a while as well.  Especially since the bulk of the fabric stash is elsewhere.....  I was excited to see the walls for the first time in about 5 years:   though the thought wasn't exciting enough to keep me from doing extra  exercises at the gym simpl...

Since it's a three day weekend, Andy decided to get cracking on the shelves for the sewing room, which leads to me having to decide what color that wall needs to be painted (the overall theme is hunter green & mushroom), and in a fit of exuberance and complete insanity, I suggested we try for painting the entire room at once.  So, when I get back from the gym, I will be tackling the sewing room and trying to find spaces for everything IN the sewing room. If you don't hear from me again, please call Search & Rescue...............

For winter, we have some snowflakes Andy made to hang in the entryway, because otherwise it's really sort of stark and bare.  For spring I've often hung some flower garlands across the top, but then it's a constant battle with the cats to A) keep them off the railing, and B) keep them from beating up the flowers while ON the railing.  So I got the idea today to make some big fabric flowers to hang.  With, of course, my fearless assistant: I made a flower petal pattern on some scrap muslin, scrounged in the quilting fabric bin for some spring/flower colored material and discovered that I had enough fabric for a seriously anemic flower or one side of a reversible flower.  (Note to self:  unless one is actually serious about quilting, 1/2 yard is a pretty stupid amount of fabric to purchase).  Next came deciding how many petals the flower should have, and I just didn't think 6 worked that well, so I opted for 7: which would make it a fuller f...