Hypnoskew And The Evergrowing Stash

Well, you would think that life might slow down just a little after a wedding. But as it turns out, combining lives and stuff (well, mostly adding yarn to Connor's life) is rather time consuming. I also went on a work-ish trip last week that involved getting up around 7AM every day and passing out close to 11PM with not much time in between. Since then I have suffered a great loss. The sock I cast on the day I got married has gone missing. The yarn, the needles, the bag it was in just vanished. It's been over two weeks. I'm pretty sure it is gone forever. To console myself, I have started a Skew with the Hypnotoad yarn. I call it Hypnoskew. All hail.

I've also been knitting away at my Seadragonus sock with my Happy Go Knitty - BFL sock yarn in Forget Me Not. The pattern is by the lovely Wei Siew. Go knit a pair. It's pretty nifty.

And in between all that and more, I decided it was high time to catch up on photographing all the new stash I had acquired since the last time I had taken pictures of my stash. Bit sobering... but I love it all.

Also, it hasn't stopped me from getting a few more skeins while I was on my trip and a kit off of someone's destash on ravelry to cheer me up after the loss of my sock. Clearly, knitting the Hypnoskew has the long-lasting ability to erase any memory of buying yarn. 

Something A Bit Different - 5KCBWDAY5

For Day 5 of knit/crochet blog week the prompt is: It’s the annual challenge to blog in a way different to how you normally blog.

I've decided to do a yarn binge retrospective. I'm considering a yarn binge any time I've bought a bunch of yarn at the same time for multiple unrelated projects. (It isn't a yarn binge when I go out and buy a bunch of skeins for a single sweater.) I'll be covering all recorded yarn binges since January 2013, starting at the earliest date and moving towards the present day.

Stitches West 2013: Clearly I need to knit and spin up more from this stash enhancement. The blue Cephalopod became Southern Skies and the grey-green BMF yarn became a pair of socks. The green Cephalopod yarn is my current WIP, a Pomme de Pin. As of this writing, I'm starting on the sleeves of the sweater. The braid of Greenwood Fiberworks is also and active spinning WIP. I have one ply to go before spinning up a three ply yarn.

New Zealand yarn day 2013: I'm seeing a trend of me not knitting up my yarn binges really fast. The top step is full of gifts from Wei Siew. I did knit up the grey-blue yarn into a Robin Hoodie that I wear quite often. The bottom two skeins of Knitsch became a pair of Leyburns.

October Yarn Crawl 2013: Oh thank goodness. It looks like I do knit some of the things I buy. The left green skein was put into Beyond The Pines, the blue Tosh became a Deep Sea Wanderer, and the blue and orange skeins became Velomeisters.

Knitting Lab 2013: My excuse for this was the Canon Hand Dyes was at Knitting Lab and it isn't often one gets to choose her skeins in person. The top cake of Knitted Wit became a hat and the bottom four skeins became socks. (The leftmost 2 skeins were knit into the same socks.) Socks 1, Socks 2, and Socks 3.

Stitches West 2014: This is a really doozy. This year was the first year that I went all four days. I only bought things three days because I purposely went as everyone was closing up on the fourth day. (I had to go retrieve some samples.) The pink/purple Canon Hand Dyes is currently being knit by Tyler. I wore socks that he made me on so many knit nights in a row that I managed to convince him that I am knit worthy and deserve new socks. And the black/white skeins of Koigu have been knit up into a currently unreleased pattern.

Anzula Trunk Show: I shouldn't have gone. I knew that if I went to "just look", I'd leave with skeins. The two skeins that are marked are also in a still-to-be-released design.

I started this post as a fun way to see what I've knit up. But now having written everything out... it's a little sobering. The good news is that I have a tremendous amount of self control in all the other aspects of my life. I guess the lack of self control had to emerge somewhere. At least you can make things out of yarn.

If anyone else does a yarn binge retrospective, I'd love to see it. I'm sure I'm not alone... right?

Conversation Between Workers - 5KCBWDAY4

Today is Day 4 of Knit Crochet Blog week and the topic is to write a dialogue between yourself and [a tool you use for your craft]. Rather than follow the topic exactly as written, I'm just going to use it as jumping off point. I'll be writing writing a letter to my favorite crafting tool: yarn.

Dear sock yarn,

I love you more than I ought to. I only wish that I could knit you faster so I could buy more friends to join you in your cubby.

-Audry

P.S. You guys probably already know this, but I can't help myself when it comes to sock yarn. You'll have some new friends joining you shortly.

The Golden Fleece

On Saturday I had a delightful time at The Golden Fleece signing books and and helping people figure out what size of the Robin Hoodie would fit them the best. I almost left with no pictures until my Mum pointed out the beautiful display. Gunilla did a fabulous job. I've never seen all the Lit Knit garments displayed so well at the same time. Plus, Celestarium made an appearance.

I failed to leave without yarn. I had spotted this two weeks... and... well... it is a darn good yarn. Each skein is 600yds (540m) of single ply silk and I believe that the yarn is sourced from textile waste. The color way is Dark Sand and I'm planning to make an Hélène. Then there were beads. I think you all can see what happened next.

Has anyone else recently found a new-to-you yarn that you are excited about? I'd love to hear about it.

Yarn Equilibrium

There must be some rule in the universe that dictates the specific equilibrium of yarn to space that must be maintained in my room. Because just the other day I was able to use up two skeins and on exactly the same day I bought two more. I'd like to note that I hadn't even planned on going to the yarn shop. It just sort of happened. I also didn't know the color of Ella Rae lace merino I wanted had come in. Color 131 if you are curious. I didn't know that only one of those skeins would be the perfect balance of orange to yellow I was hoping for and that the person who had knit a pair of socks with that color, a pair of socks I greatly admired, would be in and verify that this particular skein matched her's very closely.

I might have known that the monthly Tosh order was suppose to come in. But I still hadn't planned to go to the shop. It was only after they called me about a work related thing, and I verified that the Tosh really had come in, that my fate was sealed. That and the car was free. The universe had aligned everything so that two skeins of yarn would come home with me. That other skein is Tosh sock in the color Gilded. (Funny how one of the skeins used had been Tosh. I guess the universe has also dictated the amount of Tosh that must remain in my stash.)

How am I justifying this purchase? By saying that I have a plan for both skeins. And that I am certain the universe would have exploded, taking us all with it, had I not bought the skeins. Yarn equilibrium has been maintained in my room. Your welcome.

Stash Cleaning

Yesterday I spent time cleaning my desk up, which lead to reorganizing part of my yarn stash. Of course, in order to get the extra tub I wanted for my yarn, I had to clean up the Christmas light/ assorted light box. I made a little animation of the organization.

I had to move from three containers to four. One box for yarn remnants/half skeins, a box for all the animal hat yarn, a box for other full skeins of yarn, and the little folding basket now contains knitting in progress. It'll be pleasant looking for yarn and not having a whole mountain rain down on me.

Tidy Mind, Tidy Stitches - 2KCBWDAY3

How do you keep your yarn wrangling organised? It seems like an easy to answer question at first, but in fact organisation exists on many levels. Maybe you are truly not organised at all, in which case I am personally daring you to try and photograph your stash in whatever locations you can find the individual skeins. However, if you are organised, blog about an aspect of that organisation process, whether that be a particularly neat and tidy knitting bag, a decorative display of your crochet hooks, your organised stash or your project and stash pages on Ravelry.

I have heard stories of people having entire rooms, or even having to rent storage lockers for their stash. I'm quite proud to say that my stash fits into my bedroom just fine. I have a bookcase dedicated to yarn. The striped bin has unused skeins, the grey bin has used skeins, and the bottom suitcase holds all the yarn I bought when I last went to New Zealand.

Right next to my bed is an active project basket. It holds skeins that will be used in the near future.

Right above the basket is my workspace. It is a bit messy, but it holds projects that are actively being knit.

Next to the desk is the bookcase of colored fiber and all of my handspun. Not shown is all the natural colored fiber in my closet. And under my bed is a suitcase dedicated to finished projects. Everything is organized and easy to find.

On a separate subject, you can now Follow my blog with bloglovin.

Labels Are Only The Beginning

I've made some labels for my knitting and it only took forever. Photoshop decided to close on me right as I was saving. How kind. Even though the tag is based on my blog header, it still had to be made nearly from scratch so that all the trees and type would fit.

Looks familiar doesn't it.

I was happy to find that I had some ribbon. I knew that one day my obsessive yarn/ribbon hoarding would come in handy.

The collection has grown since this photo was taken

I took the cowl and headband to the farmer's market. I brought an extra tag for the bear hat I brought by last week, but as it ends up a half hour after I left, it was bought.

I'm hoping to open an etsy store some time in the near future. Labels down. Everything else to go.

It's Hip To Be A Square

I've been debating whether or not to start a Granny A Day since I've got a stash of acrylic yarn I need to bust. It's my own fault. I have a hard time not buying yarn when I see it at the thrift store.

The acrylic level of The Stash is overflowing

Of course doing a granny a day is no fun without having a friend to do it with. So I spent the day teaching Lindsey how to make grannies.

Crocheting Fiend

We've decided to start with a smaller project first. The Granny Square Slippers by The Purl Bee. I only recently learned how to make a granny square and Lindsey learned today. Pretty good for a first try.

My first square and and Lindsey's first square

Scooter joined in the fun as well

Scooter learns to crochet

It briefly cleared up today, so I got to do a quick photo shoot for the fox hat.

Foxy

I think I'd like to do a few woodland creature hats. Although I'm not sure what animals I should go with. Any suggestions would be helpful. So far I'm thinking about doing a bear hat and a raccoon hat.