Saturday, April 22, 2006

Flash My Stash

OK, everyone else was showing their pictures three weeks ago, but here is my stash unveiled for the blogging public.

two boxes, two baskets and several bags of wool

It has shrunk since the photo was taken because the bundle of knitting at the front is now a genuine scarf.

scarf in sun

Actually, that is a picture from before I finished it. But I think it is a particularly stylish photo.


In addition, the two baskets each contain a whole knitting project, including knitting in progress, patterns and anything else needed for the project. Hence one of the baskets is not full of yarn but also contains all this:

jumper and book

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Strangely bereft

The alpaca scarf is cast off, and just needs me to finish off the ends (I can't say "off the needles", because it has a sewing needle in it).

That leaves me with no complex knitting in progress.

That makes me feel me feel ... somewhat lost.

It's not that I have nothing crafty to do - two quilts in progress, a tapistry, various odd bits of embroidery - as well as two jumpers I am knitting. It's just I have nothing that will get me into the "zone". The jumpers are too easy, just stocking stitch: I don't need to concentrate on those, I can read while I knit them, for heavens sake. The quilts both need use of the sewing machine, which while it can be fun, involves too much stopping to press seams to get into the right meditative mood. The embroideries might do it, but they have been untouched so long it will take a while to get back into them.

I'm thinking about making a clam shell bag from an early Knitting. You knit several clam shells, each using four different colours - they used Rowan wools. Then you sew them together to make a bag. If I remember the pattern, it is reasonably complex, and is just the right thing to occupy my mind.

Unfortunately, it is the kind of object where the right colours will make it beautiful, and the wrong colours will make it garish. So that means searching through my stash, which means uninterupted time and space to spread out and ponder. And I haven't got the hour or two with no-one around to make the choices, so I can't begin it yet.

Which leaves me rather frustrated.

However, I have found a use for some other knitting I'd discarded: I'll blog that when I've got some taken some suitable pictures.

Monday, April 17, 2006

Stash Thoughts

I like to look at wool and fabric and other crafty stuff, and contemplate the options of what I could do with it - the potential jumpers and blankets and patterns and pictures that could come from it.

On the other hand, when it enters my stash, it becomes heavy with responsibilty. I have it, therefore I Must Do Something With It.

My stash has a natural maximum, an amount which if exceeded is just plain Too Much. I can't stand the idea of SABLE (stash acquired beyond lifetime expectancy), but I'm also afraid of not having enough. In between is the Right Amount, and at the moment, I'm on the high end of the Right Amount - any more and it would become too much.

I nearly capitulated to yarn desire last week, though. I was staying with relatives, and two days running went into their local town centre. I did boring shopping, but I also went into the fabric/yarn shop. It had a much wider variety of yarn then in my local shops, which seem to only have Sirdar and Hayfields. This shop has Rowan and Jaegar and Wendy and Patons and Peter Pan and Twilleys and even some Gedifra.

I was tempted, very very tempted to buy some wool. I saw it in the bargain bin, three balls of chunky red Twilleys Freedom. I'm sure it can be felted, and there was some lovely matching variegated wool from the same range, in oranges and reds. Or I could have got some purple with matching variegated wool in purples and greens.

picture of Twilleys Freedom from destash blog
I could even picture what I would do with it, a felted bag using mosaic squares from Vivian Hoxbro, as shown on a blog I surfed too last week. I could buy three balls of plain, and two of variegated, and use the variegated to make the inset squares and and the plain to make the surrounding.

The first time I went into the shop, I put it back, because I might be going back the next day. The second time, I remembered the Noro Kueryon, which I bought to make a felted bag with. So I put it back again.

PS the picture is from this possibly deleted post from destash blog.

Saturday, April 15, 2006

Time for a post

In honour of Project Spectrum here are some yellow primroses.


I've got lots of ideas for posts bubbling away in my mind, but all you get today is some primroses. There'll be more another day - patchwork and knitting and stuff.

Thursday, April 06, 2006

Where are those pictures??

Yes, I said I'd put some pictures up, and no I haven't done so yet.

I've been looking at free picture hosting sites, starting with a couple of lists from image host advisory. I'd rejected loads for the basic reason of "I don't like the initial interface", and was on the verge of doing a proper comparison of the remaining couple of dozen.

However, I've also been planning to set up my own semi-professional website. I've got plans for the future, and having my own website is an early goal. So if I've got my own website, why worry about a free photo host? I can use my website to host my pictures.

The first problem is choosing the right name. The perfect name is gone. The nearly perfect name is gone. There is a skew of names that will suit, and I need to pick my way through them and choose just the right name. And those thoughts take time. So the pictures will wait

Sunday, April 02, 2006

It has come to my attention...

Sorry, about the lack of pictures over the last couple of entries.

I don't want to upload any more pictures to blogger, because there is no way of ever deleting them. Unfortunately, the alternative picture hosting site to which I have access has hidden session IDs in the URLs.

I'll be looking at various free photo hosting sites: I've got a list, but feel free to send me any suggestions. Hopefully I'll have some pictures up on Wednesday.

Saturday, April 01, 2006

Pictures of Stash

Flash Your Stash Day, 2006!

Here we go: this is my yarn stash, except for two skeins of sari silk.

boxes of stash
Compared to some I've seen, it is quite a reasonable amount. (However, this does not include my fabric stash. But don't tell anyone.) I think the Next Generation might have got some odd balls in their bedrooms, which may be returned at some point, but possibly not.

No, I'm not going to open up the boxes today, so tough.

The blue box contains mostly Stuff I Bought. In my defence, I have been knitting since I was seven, so I've had decades to Buy Stuff. The yellow box is over half Stash Dumping. Stash Dumping is related to Stash Diving, in the following way

Stash Diving

You look through someone else's stash, going "ohhh, ahhh, oh that's lovely" and they say "take it", and you go home with some beautiful new yarn, and make lots of plans for what you will do with it all.

Stash Dumping

Someone else looks through their own stash and gives you bits of it, and you go home thinking "what am I going to do with this", and sometimes even "I don't want this horrible yarn, what can I do with it?".

Karma

A teenager Stash Dives in the Previous Generation's stashes, grows up, and gets Stash Dumped by the Previous Generation, although sometimes with things that have been dumped on them.

The two brown baskets on the yellow box contain everything needed for my main WIPs, a V-neck jumper for the Next Generation, and a V-necked jumper for me. I don't have a pattern. I don't remember making a V-neck before. Hmmmmm. Anyone else see a potential problem here?

However, they are not full of stash: when I take the yarn out, you find this in the front basket:
jumper and book

Behind them on the yellow box is my oddments bag. It isn't full. The little skeins on the blue box should be in there as well.

On top of the pile on the blue box, is a ziplock bag containing lengths of yarn from the news:rec.crafts.textile.yarn swops. Each month you sign up, you send five 4m lengths of yarn to your partner, and they send five 4m length of yarn back to you.

Underneath is a pack of Jamieson's which was bought at Ally Pally: it was half price, and I was told that it was on sale because the dye had come out wrong, and didn't match their shade cards. I think it's a lovely colour. The pack of Sirdar Denim Tweed came from a local shop, and was also massively reduced.

The blue bag contains enough aran wool to make a jumper. But that leads us on to

Ancient Stash

aran woolThe Aran come from a shop in the Yorkshire Dales, bought for me by my mother when I still lived at home. My intention was to design myself an authentic aran jumper, and every so often I thought about it. Eventually I realised I didn't actually want that style of jumper, and the project was shelved. I don't know for certain what I will do with it.

This is my oddments bag:

bag of oddments
These are the oldest things in my oddments bag:

yarn balls
The little blue ball in the bottom left of the picture has been in my stash the longest. It was in a basket I bought at a Scout jumble sale, I was perhaps ten years old. I occasionally use a tiny bit of it.

The two green Country Style leftovers are from a batwing jumper I knitted. There was a diagonal line from the waist to the opposite shoulder, and underneath the line was the tweed effect, and above the line was the plain green.

The green yarn and the red yarn, with the white specks, are French, possibly Pengouin. They were bought to make a jumper for my cousin's child.

The red and the blue ball are Patricia Robert's own brand, bought from her shop in Covent Garden. I used them to make a pair of blue gloves with a knitted red bow.

Also from the bag:

yarn ballsStash Modern:

Noro woolThese four balls of wool are all I've bought this year.

The only yarn I bought between Ally Pally and the New Year was a special offer of a pack of Country Style, being used for one of the V-necks I am knitting. Aren't I virtuous?

A Picture of Stash



I'm trying a different way of getting pictures into my blog.

For reference, I have two skeins of sari silk that aren't shown in this collection.

Maybe more later.