A Little Yarn On The Side

Today someone on the Cold Sheeping thread on Ravelry asked me if I had any idea what my net stash decrease has been after all this Cold Sheeping.  I know from my side tallies that I have knit up 357 balls/skeins/hanks/whatever.  That's sort of the easy part.  BUT, in the 4 years 2 months of Cold Sheeping, there have been "reward purchases" at the end of the year, a few "dang, I ran out of yarn and need more" purchases, the chemo-cap project, gifts, a few I-don't-actually-have-the-right-yarn purchases, and the infamous "I am on pain pills, in pain, feeling sorry for myself, and basically bribing myself to not murder anyone" purchase in November.  So, that isn't a net stash decrease.  I have now gone through my blog, through my Ravelry stash & stash used up tabs, and I think I can say with reasonable accuracy that the stash IN has been 212 balls, so the true NET decrease is 145 balls.  I did donate a big bag of icky acrylic yarns, but did not...

And the first of TWELVE sweaters is almost finished: and, being me, I still think 12 sweaters/shawls entirely doable.  Probably not too surprising, because I also seem to be able to believe that chocolate chip cookie DOUGH has no calories, even if the cookies do.   My world is a fun place. Now that the sewing room is under attack  an organizational-spree, we thought it would be a good time to rehang the closet doors: which would have been a FANTASTIC thing to remember before packing up all the shelves.  The screws, I can locate.  The metal sliding parts.........not so much.  They are in a plastic baggie, but where that baggie now IS would be anyone's guess.  "A box" is as close as I can come.  So......maybe later.

Pilfering the folding table we generally use downstairs when we have parties,  I set up the U-arrangement I'm thinking would work: or would if this were actual furniture and not plastic tables.  Picture the card table with the stereo on it actually being just part of the actual desk.  I thought it would be great  to be able to sew while looking out the window, which works really well for the first part of the day, but by afternoon: Um, yeah.  These are indeed southern-facing windows.  How did you guess?  New plan:  the embroidery machine can go on that table.  But, I do think this will be a fantastic layout if I can figure out how to get 4 machines and a computer all set up around it.  For the eventual actual furniture, Andy will make the desk, and we can make most of them a bit narrower so it doesn't eat up as much space. Trying to do a test-run was a bit interesting as I haven't the faintest idea where anything actually is--exc...

Rats, I really thought that extra day in February would get me one more ball of yarn, but alas...it did not happen.  So, for February my totals ended up as follows: Skeins of yarn used:  7.25 Yards of yarn used:  1,631.65 Yards of fabric used:  6.25 Not bad, and this time there was no yarn thrown away.  Whipping out my calculator (really, even math is fun if yarn is involved), if I averaged 1631 yards of yarn every month this year, I could use up 19,583 yards of yarn for the year AND get to say I only have about 10 year supply of yarn.  All I need to do is keep myself AWAY from the lace weight..................

*  It's impossible to fully appreciate what a crappy job one has been doing on dusting until one starts packing up a room *  A marker without a cap will always fall ink-side down into the carpet, but a straight pin will fall pointy-end UP *  BEFORE the boxes start getting packed up, think through any possible reason--such as trying out furniture arrangements--that might make one wish that one had not just thrown crap randomly in boxes, or, alternatively, keep at least ONE measly little project together--patterns, pins, directions, thread-- just in case *  If two long-haired cats regularly insist on hanging out in the sewing room with you, vacuum really often or get a vacuum cleaner that doesn't  have the clear cylinder showing you the scary amount of fur that just came out of your carpet. *  There are smarter things to do than pack and schlep boxes when recovering from a back injury *  If your cat has his own water glass  in the sewing r...

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 ...