Sunday, September 02, 2007

Little Things

I've been on quite a tear in the past week or so trying to rid myself of all those little odd balls that seem to keep piling up in my stash. I am one of those people who finds that one lovely ball of yarn sitting in the sale bin at the LYS and buys it. So instead of a stash that I can delve into when the next must have sweater is published in Interweave, I have a collection of oddballs without any clear idea as to what they'll become. Another thing about me is that I'm one of those people who kind of hates having a stash. I know, I know, I'm crazy, who doesn't love having a stash? Maybe it's more that I just don't have room for a stash, and frankly, being inundated with THAT much yarn would leave me with a feeling of unnaccomplishment. I would feel overwhelmed, as if I will never reach the end. I guess that's the point, isn't it?


Anyway, the photograph above gives me a great sense of accomplishment. A scarf out of one skein of Malabrigo found on sale. A pair of Kim's hats made from Plymouth Galway Highland skeins and scraps. A pair of Knucks from a sale ball of Rowan Felted Tweed. A Dream Swatch from a sale ball of Noro Cash Iroha. A pair of wristwarmers from another ball of Cash Iroha (actually in the same color as the ones from Last Minute Knitted Gifts. It's a gorgeous shade of magenta that I WISH I'd been able to find more of. Alas! Such is the fate of the sale bin.) Two more hats, the Purl Beret from a ball of Claudia Hand Painted, and a pink sparkly number from a ball of handspun I picked up in Maryland a few months ago.


Granted, I still have leftovers from SOME of these balls, and more bags of leftovers at home. It's getting to be time to make an afghan.



I bought the yarn for this hat from Raven's Nest in Chesapeake City, MD. If you are ever out that way I reccomend you stop by, they have a wonderful selection and a helpful staff. I think it's a blend of wool with a bit of silk and a string of sparkly nylon thread is plied throughout the bulky yarn. I lived the layers of pink with the occasional spot of teal and dark purple. If you've been keeping up with your September fashion magazines you'll see that bulky knits and anything tactile is big big big for fall. I liked seed stitch for this because it spoke to those trends. I had no pattern, simply cast-on 60 stitches onto size 8 circs, knit an inch in 1x1 ribbing, made one increase and switched over to size 9 dpns for the body. When I thought it was long enough I decreased, and voila! I'm kind of in love with it.




The Purl Beret from the Purl Bee, started off on size 2 Plymouth Speedway circs. These needles are awful. Do not use them. Fortunately, my gauge was off, and the colors were pooling, so I swtiched over to larger bamboo circs and voila! I LOVE this colorway. It's called Bootcamp, and I picked it up from kpixie. It's just so...fall. The burnt oranges against the navy and olive, beautiful. Now, I would've finished this in one day, but I misread the pattern and knit the body far too long, began to run out of yarn, and frogged the whole thing and started from scratch. Sure, I could've unknit, but I liked working with the yarn so much that I didn't mind ripping it out and starting fresh.


Now, the colors do pool a bit near the crown at the second round of decreases, but I'm ok with this. A little bit of pooling is ok, but had it happened throughout the overall look would have been splotchy and very very un chic.




Finally, I got around to finishing Danica. This came out of 4 balls of Noro Silk Garden I got on sale (there was more than one ball! hurrah!) I can't say that I'm entirely in love with the colorway. You may recall I started a very colorful and narrower version of this scarf, but have yet to finish it. (The scarf is in Philadelphia; I'm not.) Anyway, I wanted a wider version so I bought 4 balls and started off casting on 40 stitches. This was too wide, so I went with 30. I love the entrelac because it knits up so quickly and people are so impressed by it, especially with self-striping yarn. I think the whole thing took 5 days fmro start to finish, but I was taking breaks to knit all those little bits and pieces. I'm still not sure that I'll keep this for myself. It's kind of dreary. For some reason I thought it was more purple, but there's a lot of grey bits that aren't winning me over. It also needs to be blocked.




I've got some bigger things on the needles right now. Stay tuned.

2 comments:

Ilix said...

Wow!! Way to go with the stashbusting! I wish I were so prolific!
I came by way of Craftster..... there is a stash-b-gone-along you may want to post in!

Mom IsAmagpie said...

Those are awesome. I always get distracted when I try stash busting. I will think of the picture with all your FOs for motivation!