So back in January, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee blogged about her self-imposed sock club, bundling together yarn from her stash with patterns and setting up 12 grab-and-go bags. I thought it was a nifty idea, and then I forgot about it. After my frog-or-finish decisions, though, I started thinking about it again, because it was time for me to look at my stash and start thinking about what to keep and what to donate/gift/sell. I have a bin for yarnstorming supplies (mostly odds and ends of various yarns, vintage acrylic) and I set up a box of yarns for Mom (kitchen cotton, she likes making dishcloths), and then I stalled.
Well. Would you want to give this up?
At that point, I went through my Ravelry stash (that helped me figure out how long some yarns had been in my stash) and my favorites, and did some pattern suggestion searches. With that, I started a Ravelry queue and have been bagging yarns together with notecards that have the pattern name and hook/needle size written on them. No printed patterns, because 1) I don’t own a printer, and 2) I have been using my Kindle for patterns and really liking it.
This is the first bag, which I now have in my portable project bag. I’ve started the Wham Bam Thank You Lamb cowl by Susan Chang, and it’s at just the right speed for winding down from the holidays – garter stitch and quick progress, resulting in a cowl that is very gift-able (that is to say, Muggles will like it). I’m over halfway through after one car ride, and if I knit during the drive back home tonight (I’m not going to be the one driving!), I’ll be done and ready to cast on for the Cabled Button Toque by Amy Swenson, which I think could coordinate well with the cowl without being too matchy-matchy.
For yarns that I don’t have a project in mind for, it’s time for my trade/sell list on Ravelry. I don’t need any more yarn right now, so it’s all sell (unless you have some marvelous handspun yarn to trade). Because I need to move these yarns out of my stash, I’m asking for 10 – 20% below average retail price for untouched skeins that have been sealed in plastic bags away from light and odors, in a pet-free home. As I continue to sort through my stash, more yarns are likely to be added.
Around October I started thinking that I should frog or finish my WIPs by the end of the year. This week, it got obvious that I wasn’t going to finish everything, so I buckled down and made decisions (and live-tweeted it with the hashtag #frogorfinish).
It quickly became obvious that I like making hats, but I don’t like weaving in ends.
I remembered the dishcloth kick I got onto last year.
I even had a few projects that had been finished and just needed a wash! A few more hats were finished and washed, then dried in the oven (with a timer so I wouldn’t forget – 170F, checked every 10 minutes). I bagged up several finished hats and mailed them off to a dear friend of mine in the Pacific Northwest, to be used/shared/gifted as she chooses.
Now I have two big bags of WIPs that can be finished quickly; my plan is to keep one next to the couch so I can grab projects to work on during my commute or while relaxing at home. I grabbed two dishcloths on my way to the post office yesterday; they just needed the edgings finished and ends woven in. Done!
Last night, I couldn’t fall asleep, so I finished a set of crochet potholders and coordinating dishcloth. Done!
I’ve also gotten started on destashing. More on that later.
As I put my yarn stash into storage (again), I am reminded that I have plenty of yarn to work with and don’t need to acquire much more. Mom, on the other hand, has been knitting and crocheting much of what I’ve destashed at high speed. Last week I handed her a bag of oddballs of Karabella Aurora 8 that had been sitting in a box since 2007 (because it had turned into two complete balls and a small heap of small balls of only a couple of yards each) and this week she showed me the hat she knit up from the full balls and then topped with a dense, squooshy, carefully hand-snipped pom-pon made out of the small balls.
Well, that kind of productivity ought to be encouraged, especially when it means I can help support YarnStory, a brand-new yarn shop that opened just a few weeks ago in Honolulu. The shop hasn’t had a Grand Opening yet (the owner is waiting on several boxes of yarn), so I’m holding off on a full review, but here’s what I picked up today for Mom:
Brown Sheep Co. Kaleidescope, 80% cotton, 20% wool. Pink/red dominant is color KAL-20 ANAHEIM, Paintlot 0310, and Blue/purple dominant is KAL-10 BELIZE, Paintlot 179.
Yarn spun from recycled silk sari fabric
Reusable takeout/takeaway cup sleeves as seen on Craftster!
unidentified scrap wool (pink)
Blue Sky Alpacas Dyed Cotton (poppy orange)
Blue Sky Alpacas Dyed Cotton, expresso, lemonade, sky, honeydew
For a 16 oz. takeout cup:
With worsted weight yarn and a G hook,
chain 30. Join into a ring and hdc into each chain. Increase 2 sts
every other round (e.g. inc 1, hdc 12, inc 1, hdc rem), checking the
fit every once in a while, working a plain round to tighten it up if
necessary. I like a cozy about 6 rounds high. Stretchy yarns like wool
need fewer increase rounds – increasing 2 sts every third round might
do the trick. If you want it to fit lower, start with a shorter
foundation chain.
I gave one as a small thank-you gift to a barista who makes me awesome iced decaf soy dirty chai lattes (chai latte with a shot of espresso). Barista delighted, shows to a bunch of our co-workers, co-workers make many comments on it. I need to remember not to downplay my skills – sure, it’s something I just whipped up with scrap yarn and an empty takeout cup…but I don’t have to say that. I can just smile and say thank you.
I don’t have pics of the first one, because I didn’t think to take any. I crocheted these two cozies last night, and I have a new (to me) camera to play with. I can get in much closer with this newer camera and I’m liking it a lot (a Sony Cybershot DSC-P41).
Crochet Coffee Cup Cozy by
MK Carroll is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
One more way to use up oddballs of yarn, and not lose coasters outside when the wind blows.
20 – 30 yards (18 – 27 m) Worsted / 10 ply (9 wpi)
US 7 – 4.5 mm
Cozy in photo knit with Cascade 220, color “Citron”
Pattern is available as a free PDF download through Ravelry: download now
ERRATA for version 1.1: Round 4 should read k6, kfb.
I’ve been cleaning up my fiber stash, sorting it out and offloading a lot of unused yarn. It’s all nice and neat in storage tubs (okay, I still have one in the kitchen), sorted into animal fiber, plant fiber, fabric, odds and ends, and unfinished objects. People, the UFO box is the most full. I need to get on it, and taking items to the SNB meeting for finishing work is helping, ’cause I get to talk more and still get things done. On the oddball front, I’ve given most of it away but still have a few that I am Going To Use, I Promise.
Oddball:
Jo Sharp Silkroad Aran Tweed. A wool/silk/cashmere blend, color 118 “dusk”, 95m/50g. It has a matted, lumpy texture and is not as soft as you might expect from the fiber content at first, but after a washing it blooms a bit and gets very lovely and soft. I bought a single ball of this when I purchased two balls of “jewel” to make a baby kitty ear hat with. “Jewel” is a lovely deep berry color with little flecks of blue and other colors. “Dusk” is a med-dark gray with flecks of blue, white, rust, and lighter gray. Viv and I have been arguing about it – I say it looks like dryer lint. She had to get a detailed explanation of what dryer lint is (I should not have been surprised that she’s never cleaned out a lint trap), and while she is willing to agree that it has a resemblance, she thinks it’s cool and now wants to make things out of dryer lint.
Oddball Stashbuster: the doll hat
Say hello to our new Pullip! She’s a Rovam, yet to be named.
I’m working on a set of doll hat patterns for sale, possibly in human sizes as well*. This is the prototype for the first, a button cloche. The crown and brim are worked separately and the brim overlaps on the side, where the completely decorative and non-functional button is.
This used up maybe a third of the ball. Very quick, crown done on dpns and brim worked flat using two dpns. I like the tweedy look of the yarn, and the texture camouflages the seam nicely. Pattern in the works!
*If you know what the head measurements for a Blythe doll are, please let me know. I can’t seem to find exact measurements, and I am not going to buy one just so I can find out.
Update: thanks Keohinani!
“the regular blythe doll head is 10.5″ in circumference. from the chin to the top of the head measures about 4″. from the top of the ear to the top of the head is about 2″. laying the measuring tape flat against the forehead, the distance from ear to ear on the face is 5″. going over the top of the head, the distance from ear to ear is 6.5″. need anything else?”
