The skein that sparked insanity

On the cusp of a brand spankin' New Year and I find myself sorting through bins of yarn.

My goal (if you can rightfully call it that) is to get every skein of yarn into Ravelry with a photo and bin location. The craziness that sparked this endeavor was my desire to find a skein of sock yarn that I KNEW I had. It nearly became an obsession as every bin was searched and searched through again. Ha! The bins are see through and laziness overtook me - the one skein of yarn was in the middle of a bin and could not be seen through the outside.

Insane.

After finding the skein of yarn, it didn't match for the project in mind. I refuse to buy new yarn, so a suitable substitute was located for some new socks - Cranberry Biscotti. Love this sock and it will be knit, but probably not soon. You see, the Through the Loops annual sock KAL is beginning tomorrow and this will be my third year to participate. The yarn for that sock has been chosen (yes, from the mega stash).

Needs vs. Wants

I don't need more yarn...but I want it!

Madelinetosh's Magnolia Society Club was too much to resist. Had she named it something else, there would have been a better chance, but all of that hand dyed yarn plus the name 'Magnolia'...it was hopeless from the beginning.

This is Tosh Worsted in the colorway Foxglove.


The Shalimar Zoe was purely by chance. Honestly, I won this from the Yarn4Socks site for my Independence Day post. Lucky me, it was thrilling to receive their message that I had won and days later, the Juniper Berry was sitting in my mailbox.

Now, as if that wasn't enough, Jeanne posted about Wandering Cat Yarn's site on Etsy.

Yes, it is cashmere (700 yards of it). The colorway is Lemongrass and I am in love.

I must go knit something!

Need more yarn

...so the 2-at-a-time socks are finished. The pattern is Berry Season (these are named Blue- Berry Season) and were knit from 2 skeins of Mirasol Hacho on size 4 needles.

It was such a relief to finish a pair of socks that another pair was cast-on. These are 'what the ?' socks. Knit from Noro Silk Garden Sock, the finished product looks nothing like the original skein...see?

Mitizi and I laughed a lot at the sock coming off the skein. It was being knit on the ferry and a couple of people commented that the sock looked nothing like the yarn and asked if it really did come from that skein. Hee hee -typical Noro.

With some successful knitting under my belt, we descended upon the WI Sheep and Wool Festival. There were many stash enhancement opportunities which need to be added to my Ravelry stash. Here are a couple of teasers:

Briar Rose Charity - with buttons! This is destined to become a jacket I've been thinking about for the last month.

some wonderful yarn for a gift Bugg will love - fiber escapes me...let's call this Softee Softee.

and a little something for Georgia - this silk and wool roving from Creatively Dyed. Absolutely yummy!

You are wondering if this is all, right? ummm, no. There are other things that just followed me home but it is safer to just add them to my Rav stash in case my honey is reading.

Books?

I've been going through my enormous collection of books and have a list of de-stash to post soon. Keep an eye out, I will put the list here and on Ravelry as well.

De-stashing and Enough sock yarn to sock the world

The De-Stash

Slowly but surely I have started de-stashing - emphasis on s - l - o - w - l - y.

A bit was posted on E-Bay and then I checked the yarn closet to see what else might be in the realm of giving up. Giving my yarn away for a song is not appealing to me at all. The idea of a win-win situation always makes me happy, but there are some of us knitters out there that want the yarn for nearly FREE and I would rather it wait patiently for me until the year 2020 (this is completely possible, too). Anyway, I could only part with a small bit this time - maybe more later.

Update: Heh, Heh...Kristy goads me into posting a picture? (see comments) Not today! My hubs would certainly see that and when I ran into the sock deal of the century we would be at an impasse.

After vacation - in mid - August, I am thinking of posting some de-stash here on my blog to sell if anyone is interested. Until then, e-mail me with any sock yarn wishes you have and I will dig into the pile to see if I have it. Want to knit with Koigu? Seriously, this is stuff only shared with knitting friends!

Sock the World

Truly, there are folks out there who knit hoards of socks. I love socks - love to knit them, love to wear them, don't mind hand washing or blocking, but I knit lots of other things too. This is why I cannot understand the enormity of the amount of sock yarn I have amassed. Theory is that it is pretty affordable to get enough cool sock yarn to make a pair of great socks. All sock yarn (within reach) was layed neatly on the floor - the idea was to post a picture for you all to see. It was so utterly embarrassing that I quickly sacked it up and stashed it back into the yarn closet. It was decided with certainty that 1. none of THAT yarn was going anywhere and 2. more socks need to be knitted. It is all great sock yarn - Lorna's Laces, Lucy Neatby's Celestial Merino, Socks That Rock, Koigu, Mountain Colors, Colinette's Jitterbug, Schaefer's Anne, Interlacement's Tiny Toes, some favorites hand dyed by pros that I dare not mutter - er, type.

So, a pair of socks WERE just finished (check previous post). That was out of Black Bunny that was nabbed off of EBay last month - while all this luscious goodness sat patiently waiting for me in the yarn closet, I purchased, received, wound yarn, and knit an entire new pair of socks. Nothing can justify the gluttonous behavior shown in the acquiring of such an amount of sock yarn! Guess what all my knitting friends can look forward to getting for their Birthday's and for Christmas...for many years to come!