Off the Wagon

On Saturday, I found a sweater's worth of lovely bluebird colored tweed fingering weight yarn on etsy.com. It was being sold at a terrific price, and it took a great deal of willpower not to click on the button.

But I didn't. I even confessed my sin to the pre-teen son, and he shared the near miss with my husband, usually a surefire method to help prevent these nasty slips with my yarn addiction.

On Sunday, with both of them out of the house, I ran a quick check on etsy just to see if the yarn was still available. If all the skeins were still there, I would consider that my message from God, and I would be compelled to buy it as soon as I saw it.

It was gone. All six skeins. Whew.

But I had a long, stressful day today, so when I came in this afternoon, I checked etsy's knitting offerings, narrowing my search to recycled or reclaimed yarns. And I fell off the wagon, folks. Not just a whoops-I-nearly-lost-my-balance slip of a single skein of sock weight wool. This was an all-out effort that took clicking on seven--yes, I am snubbing as I type it--seven separate skeins of turquoise silk/cotton at a much cheaper price than I planned on paying for silk yarn later in the spring. I practically shook when I saw it.

I am knitting like mad to finish the strawberry beret, the striped raglan, and the perfect cardigan before I start the Buttercup top that Frogginette is also knitting. I am not as adventurous as she is; I will probably follow the pattern slavishly.

Anyway, I was doing so well, cleaning out those bags of yarn, knitting them up into nice little items for myself and others. I wonder if I'll be able to avoid another hiccup in the diet. I made it 25 days.

Stash Reduction Continues

January continues to be cold and rainy, so the Stash Reduction Project is working out well. It isn't as if I have nothing else to do. With all the changes in my work schedule, the graduate course I am taking and the college course I am teaching, I have plenty to think about. But thinking about my knitting gets me through my work day.

Since I began the SRP, I have had to be a bit more creative, and that forces me to think about color combinations and pattern adjustments. For example, I am knitting a sweater from some Harrisville Highland tweed. I didn't have enough of that color to make an entire sweater, so I began pulling strands from the yarn stash. The sweater is turning out quite well. I am nearly finished with the body, and even though I have had to ravel a knitted vest to reclaim most of that Harrisville Highland, I can live with that.

Last week, I knitted a beret from hand dyed chunky weight wool--very blueberry. I have enough wool to make another just like it. Actually, I have enough purple hand-dyed wool to make two purple ones just like it, and I am knitting a red one using half hand-dyed recycled merino wool and half solid red. This hat style is not exactly flattering on me, so I'm taking them to work to see if I can sell them for $10 each.

But with a little extra cash in my pocket, I might be tempted to buy some more yarn.

Stash Reduction in Progress

This winter I have tried to go on a yarn diet. My husband would probably say that a yarn diet--at least for me--is never a cold turkey diet. You know the diets where you deprive yourself of every good thing you can imagine--butter, dessert, butter, chocolate, and butter?

That's not my style for food dieting and it isn't my style for yarn dieting, either. However, I recognized the need for some stash reduction back in the fall, so I engaged in some early Christmas gift knitting. I knit a hat for Sarah, a top for Kay, and a few scarves to put back for last-minute gifts. All these items were knit from the stash, but they were small items that didn't really put a big dent in the current holdings. It seems that the more I pull out and go through, the more yarn I have. I believe that like-species find each other in the bins and bags and shelves and find ways to multiply.

So, to lighten the yarn load that must be weighing on the floor joists in my "yarn area" (as if I have only one area!), I knit two items from Way-Back Stash: the Mayer sweater knit from 15 skeins of Aran wool I purchased at a sweater shop in Killarney a few years ago and the End of May Hat (knit from three small hanks of wool I bought in a tiny English village.

The Mayer sweater project was knit almost entirely while watching Days 1-6 of 24. Easy knitting: I made only one mistake that required tinking back. The End of May hat, however, was a white-knuckler most of the time. I'm pretty sure I was what you could describe as surly while that hat was going on, but it was only about three days of knitting, and three days of surly is pretty normal for me.

My reward for the SRPs (Stash Reduction Projects) will be a nice purchase for myself later on. Perhaps it will be some silk or some silky bamboo. I have a nice gift certificate to start with. But, if I shake all the stash yarn out and make it look pretty maybe I could trick myself into believing that all of that yarn is somehow new.

If you have any requests for gifts, now is the time to make them.