Stashbusting Frenzy

The title says it all. I went to VKL and bought yarns... oh, did I buy yarns. Not too many, mind you, but enough to make me go home and cast on a billion projects to try to cut through the Stash that is eating away at my life.
My other concern about this Stash (heretofore unmentioned) is the fact that it's sort of just out in the open on shelves and in baskets and whathaveyou. I've thrown lavender sachets into everything (holy stockings, Batman! A good use for holey stockings!...I stuff them with lavender and tie 'em off), but I'm still worried about buggies eating my fiber. I haven't had any problems yet, and my house actually happens to be stocked with all kinds of bugs that eat offensive bugs (spiders and those million-legged things are your friends, knitters), but I still feel (a) exposed and (b) too lazy to bag everything up. Besides, I'd probably have to invest in Ziploc if I really wanted to bag up everything.

So here goes...

A balaclava for The Doo when he goes biking in this vomitously cold weather (yeah, I turned vomit into an adverb). It's from the pattern Antifreeze, from an old issue of Knitty. I didn't make it quite so face suffocating—basically left off the crochet bit at the end. This yarn is from my first trip to Montreal... it's probably 4 or 5 years old. Bye bye Berroco! I still have some left, and may make some gloves for him, or fingerless mitts for me, or both (if I can). 2.25 skeins down, 3.75 skeins to go.

This is a hat for my friend Lauren, from the wildly, eternally popular Star Crossed Slouchy Beret pattern. I've made at least 3 of these—it's a good go-to hat pattern. And this Noro yarn has been sitting in my stash for approximately 3 years. 

And last but not least, this is some Lorna's Laces Green Line Worsted that has been in my stash since, oh... 2009? I mean, the yarn is discontinued, ferchrissakes. It's time to GO. I initially bought it without really knowing how these variegated yarns knit up, then once I saw the end result, I decided I didn't really like it that much. When color variation is drastically different, I think it looks silly on an adult. This is totally just my opinion, but it looks childish to me. And not in a cute, endearing way. In a desperate, oh-god-that's-a-sweater? way. Ok for socks, not ok for much else. 

Fortunately, a friend of mine is having a baby girl, and I think it would make a really pretty Baby Surprise Jacket, and that's what it will be. The Baby Surprise Jacket is especially forgiving and complementary with these kinds of variegated yarns. You can see what I mean here. They're actually made for each other. 

That's all the blogging for today. Must. knit. through. STASH.

OH, and I have a pattern coming soonish. Free. When I get a second.

Stash-dependent and Nonsense Knits

It's the new year, so now is as good a time as any to make large confessions that I can always regret later.
Hello.
My name is Flossie, and I'm a stashaholic.
You know this. I've gone on and on, at length, about my problems stashing yarn. Not actual problems stashing it—although space is becoming an issue—but real-life addiction problems.
I came to a realization the other night.
I was standing outside my house, looking up at my office window. My blinds are always drawn all the way up to let in as much light as possible. I even keep them open at night, I guess because I think I'm invisible.
I looked up, and saw this.

So... you can see my stash from outside. It's basically vaulted way up against the ceiling, in vintage gym baskets.

"My ceiling is peeling!" - Anonymous Poet

I had to get it off the ground, because the ground is full. My shelves are full. The closet is full. I have no more physical space at human level, so I had to take to the trees like a goddamn monkey.
Which makes sense, because this is my monkey brain at work, buying more yarn than I rightly know what to do with.
It's got to stop.

It doesn't have to stop because you can have too much yarn. We all know you can't have too much yarn—that's been established.
It has to stop because I'm buying yarn without intention. I am not buying yarn and thinking, "Oh this will make a nice hat, or cowl, or pair of fingerless mitts."
I am buying yarn and thinking "OOH PRETTY COLORS LOTS OF COLORS PRETTY COLORS."
I only just realized this, mind you. That I am buying yarn based on how pretty it is, and nothing else. Which is complete and utter nonsense. Especially because now I have yarn that I look at and think, "Gee, that's not THAT pretty."
And it's not just color, it's the having it. I'm buying yarn to put it on display. I'm buying yarn, to look at yarn. To literally say to myself, "Look at all this yarn you have. You have a lot of yarn. Look at how pretty it looks scattered all over this room."
NONSENSE.
What I should be saying to myself is, "Look at all this yarn you have. You're going to die in this yarn. This yarn is going to eat you alive or bury you and no one will find you until your decaying corpse starts to stink and gag the neighbors next door."
The worst part is, do you know to what all this leads? Nonsense knits. Knits that are being knit for the sake of eating yarn, knits that are complete and utter nonsense. I have become the Galactus of Yarns, just swallowing them up and spitting them out as finished projects that don't even make a lot of sense.

I know what you're thinking: "What do you mean they don't make sense? How can a finished project not make sense?"

EXHIBIT A

The Nonsense Twinkle Blanket

I had all this cranberry Twinkle in The Stash that I wanted to make into a Queen-size blanket.
Yegads! This yarn actually had an intention!

Yeah, it did. But then my little brother needed a cowl for some girl, so without any forethought whatsoever, I used some of that cranberry Twinkle to make it... and didn't have enough for the size blanket I wanted to make. So what did I do? I took this really ugly skein of weird greenish brown Twinkle (which was originally going to be a hat for The Doo, but he hated it, so it was ripped out, balled up, and thrown into The Stash), and I plopped it into this cranberry Twinkle blanket. And not even in the middle, mind you. At a certain point, I just started knitting with it. It is asymmetrical nonsense.

You see, I just stopped caring. I was so anxious to get this Twinkle the hell out of my stash, it didn't matter that it was nonsense. It didn't matter that there was a weird, green-brown splodge in the middle of a perfectly good cranberry blanket. I didn't care anymore. I didn't even do a gauge. I just wanted the yarn to be a blanket and stop being in my pile of yarn, and it didn't matter how ugly or weird it was going to be, as long as it was a blanket and I could sleep under it.
The Doo loves it. Or so he says.
I think that's what this year is going to be. The Year of Nonsense Knitting. The Year of Getting It The Hell Outta My Stash.
I'm telling you this now, because tomorrow is Vogue Knitting Live. And yes, I'm going. And yes, there is yarn I want to buy. And yes, I'm going to buy it.
But not without intention. I have to have something I'm going to make—something definite—or I can't buy anything. I can't. I will not make another ugly asymmetrical nonsense blanket. I can't.

I have to knit The Stash this year.

One down. A billion to go.

The Greenhouse Effect

Without going into too many words about climate change, global warming, and our slow destruction of the planet (this ain't no newfangled politickin' blog, ya heard?), I'd like to say the weather has officially gone buckwild, too hot for tv crazy.

I'm located in NYC and for the last few weeks I've watched the city that never sleeps go narcoleptic. NYC proper was without power for a week, my bff in Long Island has been without power for 12 days and counting (and doesn't expect to get power until after Thanksgiving), and Staten Island and New Jersey are partially under water. Hurricane Sandy was not common doings for the tristate area. This city wasn't built to handle this kind of weather. After the blizzard of 1888, all our above ground power went underground (lots of snow piling on power lines = massive blackouts) because heck, NYC doesn't flood!... except now we do. Hmm.

This week, we had Athena, a weird Nor'easter that brought in 6-8" of snow, which wouldn't be so weird except today, three days later, it's in the 70s. This weather is buck. I don't care how you lean politically, it is kuh-razy.

I left the house the other day with my hat on, because I thought it was cold out. For some reason my house holds onto weather like a refrigerator/oven—if it's cold outside, it will stay cold in my house for 3 days, if it's warm outside, it will stay warm in my house for 3 days—so being that it was freezing in my house, I stupidly thought it was freezing outside. It wasn't. It was just mildly cold. I wore my hat for about three blocks before I buckled under the matted-hair sweat brim developing around my head. Took off my hat, and my Mickey Mouse ears reached out from either side of my head and grabbed whatever cold was readily available to them.

I needed a hat that wouldn't trap and redirect heat to my head, and frankly, I'm also pretty lazy about my hair and wear it up far more than down.

Hence, the Greenhouse Effect. A hat with a hole at the top—a hat donut, if you would. I added a little mock cable, did some decreases  so it would follow my head shape, and there you have it. I also like that it sort of gives me a 60s mod look (although I might be imagining that.

I made this in Noro Kogarashi, a bulky wool/silk blend yarn that I had lying around (remember how I'm trying to eat through my stash?). It's discontinued, but any bulky weight stretchy yarn will do. I only used half the skein, so I may design some matching fingerless mitts to use up the rest.
The pattern is free, because I love you.

 See? I'm eating through that stash as fast as I can -->

You can download the pattern from ravelry here.

Happy knitting!

flossie

My pattern, she is done!

That's right, I'm smug. 

Meet Bonaventura, named for the 16th century Italian mathematician Bonaventura Cavalieri, of which I know exactly diddly-squat, except that he worked with optics and motion, logarithms (thanks, wikipedia!), and other science-magics, but most importantly, he discovered the parabolic spiral, which isn't as well known as Archimedean spiral, but alas, the name Archimedes has been taken threefold when it comes to pattern names. So Bonaventura it is!

Bonaventura also sounds, to me, like 'beautiful adventure', and I'd like to think my cowl is just that.
Anyway, it's super easy, super addictive, and super free! And I'm kind of in love with it.

snazzy.

It's also available in DK-weight and Super Bulky, although you could really make it in any weight yarn so long as you cast on in multiples of 4. I made it in two weights to really try and cut through the fabled stash yarn. I may actually make a worsted weight version, longer so I can loop it around twice, just to cut through more yarn. But I might to give it away because really, how many of these can I wear?

I can probably wear a lot of them.

I hope you enjoy it! You can download it now from ravelry.



Happy knitting!


flossie

Probably Because It's Fall

Madelinetosh Tosh merino DK in Silver Fox

Yesterday I felt ill, which was doubly a bummer because yesterday was the first day that really felt like Fall in New York. We have so few truly Fall days anymore, it's sad if you miss one because you're sick. When you're sick Fall days just feel like windy, chilly, runny nose messes meant to make you miserable.

I've had a lot of work recently, and not as much "me" time. Even the knitting I'm doing isn't really for me—not that I can complain about it. A sponsored KAL that ends with me owning a brand new cardigan for nothing but the price of knitting and hosting the KAL is not something I can complain about. But I've had a recurring nightmare involving high school, the class bell ringing, and me completely lost as to what or where my next class is, and panicking that I won't graduate and won't find the class. It's always high school, hallways, bells, stairs, and rushing to try and figure out where I'm supposed to be. The Doo tells me dreams like these, recurring ones especially, are the subconscious poking you like a nag about something you're forgetting to do or pay attention to. And when they take place in a real location that you know, it means you have to figure out what that place meant to derive the meaning of the dream overall.

High school for me was chaotic. I was out of control as a person, doing plenty of things I probably shouldn't have been, and sort of all over the map emotionally. But the one thing I had in high school that I had nowhere else was a sense of myself as a writer. I received awards for my writing, then, and I wrote constantly. It was the one thing I could say, "YES. This is what I am, if I'm anything, most definitely."

I've been writing for air cargo; I've been writing for yarn, and knitting, and fashion, and knitwear. But I haven't just been writing. So somewhere in the morass of limited, jumbled, occupied-to-the-hilt timescape that has become my life, I will have to find time to write again.

Unless, of course, I enjoy running the hallways of my circular high school, looking desperately for my next class, and sitting in on classes I'm not sure are even on my schedule. Which I don't. I didn't like doing it in real life I certainly don't need to do it now that high school is long over.

Remember when I promised I would stop buying yarn and start knitting through the garbage-lady-from-Labyrinth amount of yarn in my room?
Well, that's what that beautiful caked Tosh DK shown above, and the cumin-colored Super Chunky Misti Alpaca, right, is all about. I originally got the Tosh DK for my Apocalypse knitting project but the color turned out to be all wrong. Of course I could have returned it, but really I couldn't. Because I'm me, and because it's yarn. The Super Chunky Misti Alpaca I bought on sale from Jimmy Beans Wool because it was pretty, on sale, and I thought I could make a quick cowl out of two skeins.
Which I did. Last night. And now I'm making a smaller-gauge version with the Tosh. So expect to see a free pattern here by hopefully next week involving both yarns—same cowl, different weights. And very easy as well.


I didn't actually stop buying yarn. Sorry about that. But I'm holding up this end of the deal, at least. The Doo says as long as I keep knitting everything, I'm ok. If I stop knitting and keep buying, then I really have a problem. Although now, I absolutely will not buy unless it's some hand-dyed, available-nowhere kind of yarn. Or Wollmeise. I just bought three skeins of Wollmeise. Because I could.

Happy knitting!


flossie

Blah blah blah it's been a while

Yada yada yada, ammaright?

This happened and that happened and let's not do the catch-up game, ok? I'm so, so bad at it and at the rate I'm posting, every gob-blammed blog post will be a catch-up blog post and that wouldn't be very fun or entertaining, would it? A bit self-involved, I might add.

I'm social media-ing for 4 different facebook pages at the moment, with 3 twitters, 3 ravelrys, and 3 pinterests thrown in there for fun. Plus sending out a newsletter between 5 and 6 times a month.

That apocalypse knitting project? My pattern was accepted. That small rectangle of knitting above? That's a sneak peek of my Apocamitts. Just the colorway, really. Which I think is sublime for the apocalypse. Very woodsy, ashy, camouflage. Love it. A very simple pattern as well—anyone can do it.  I'm hoping everyone will want a pair of Apocamitts.

But before any of that can happen, we have to raise some funds. We have funds, just not enough funds—which is not very fun at all. We want the prettiest pictures and the best photogs and great tech-editing (mistakes in patterns really suck) and possibly a book tour, so we need funds. Fun funds.

Clearly, I need my afternoon tea. Just a spot of caffeine, if you would.

Anyway, you can give here. As they say, every little bit helps, truly.

Apologies as I spend the next month harassing you for money. I know you have pennies in your couch.

happy knits,

flossie

The First Step

It's taken nearly 4 years...

It began simply enough.

Enter a foreign (or familiar) yarn store, pick out the colors you like best. Or the textures. Or the weight. Buy whatever you want. You're just starting out, you don't have anything.
Fill a basket.
Yarn stores online have sales. 30% off! 40% off! 75% off?!? Buy the yarn. It's on sale, how can you not? And I get 5% back? How. can. I. not?
Fill another basket.
Subscribe to magazines. Ooh, this project looks nice—but I don't have appropriate yarn for it... nope, I don't, not in these two baskets.
Buy the yarn.
Oh, but I'm already working on this project, and that other one is next. So I'll save all this for later...
Repeat. 20 times.
Buy more baskets. Buy shelving.

Buy a bird cage and shove yarn in it.

A yarn crawl, you say? Well, I have to support my LYSs. I'll just buy one skein from each.
An out-of-town trip, you say? Well, I have to find the LYS and support it—this is a small industry, after all. We have to help each other. I'll just buy a skein or two...
A yarn convention, you say? VKL? Well, these are yarns I've never seen. I might never see them again. I have to buy a few skeins from each...

Thus, the descent into madness.

Oh that doesn't look so bad...

There's much more below the yarn surface. 

That's a basket under that table. With more yarn peeking out.

People, I have a problem. I know from these pictures it just looks like my office is in squalor, but the sad fact is, I am buried in yarn. I'm drowning in it.

I have a problem. (First Step)

I'm posting this here, so I can't get away from it, and so my ghost readers can  hold me to task.

I cannot, for any reason whatsoever, buy more yarn.  

As much as it pains me to do it, I have to cut myself off.

My problem is so intense, so deeply ingrained, that I actually said to The Doo, "Well, if I don't buy anymore yarn and just start burning through this yarn, then if I go to a yarn store in the next few months and see a yarn I like, I can buy it for myself and hide it away, then give it to myself as a present once I've dutifully used up all the old yarn." Which makes absolutely no. sense. Plus, there's nowhere to hide more yarn.


Can we just go over that one more time? I tried to make a deal with myself that if I didn't buy more yarn, I could buy more yarn. Even if I still have too much. I could basically reward myself for... well, nothing. That's like putting a dress on a tree and saying it isn't a tree anymore. Or something to that effect. My brain isn't working up to speed anymore because it's crammed full of yarn.

So, the vow. I cannot, for any reason whatsoever, buy more yarn. I can't buy yarn on sale; I can't buy from foreign stores just because they are foreign; I can't buy a skein just 'cuz it's pretty.

I cannot, for any reason whatsoever, buy more yarn. 


Not until I've used up all this yarn. Or at least gotten it back to just being the yarn in the honeycomb shelves and birdcage. And one basket. I'll give myself that! Get down to shelves, cage, and one basket, and I'm golden. But this business of four baskets, two Lion Brand gallon-sized bags, a closet (not pictured), additional shopping and shipping bags full of yarn has to end.

It's over people. The Golden Age has ended. The Industrial Age has begun. Time to get crackin'.

All of this means that this blog will become a graveyard of skeins, reborn as projects. Get ready to see some projects. I'm going to take before and after pictures of every skein and the project it is reborn as. I have to see my progress to know I'm doing well. Like getting a one week, one month, one year chip. I also must impart to you, dear readers, just how much yarn I ridiculously have. Skein by skein, project by project, you will see my madness unraveling (har har).
Some projects will be from patterns written by other people; some projects will be patterns I have written. Either way, the rest of this year is going to be crazy and productive.

Mainly because I want more yarn for Christmas.


flossie