What this means is that I cleaned and organized my yarn stash. I have quite a bit of it--the pictures from last time really do not do it justice.
Pardon the lighting: here is all my sock yarn:
and all my laceweight:
and all my nice worsted:
Then I have 5000 yards of chenille cotton o_0 not really sure why, I think I was planning on making a blanket, but it's such a pain to knit with. Also, I have almost 3000 yards of generic wool and acrylic, which I'm saving to make toys, which seems to be pretty highly demanded.
Still, it does a stash good to be tossed a couple times a year. It allows me to check for critters, to see and appreciate all I have, and to resurrect some UFO. I crammed all my UFO in a bag that is now more easily accessible than the stash, so hopefully a few of them will get worked on. I even found one of my oldest ones, a Per Orla Apple Dishcloth, in the ballband style, a 'la Mason-Dixon Knitting, and put some serious work into it yesterday--I finished the core of it (hah! apple core) and did about half of the i-cord edging before I collapsed in a puddle of sleep and cleanliness.
It also allowed me to resurrect some old needles that I didn't know I have. I now officially have 9 pairs of size 6/4.0 mm needles. 6-7 pairs of them are currently in use, so that's not a horrible proportion, but when I finish that blanket, well, maybe I'll give a few away with some of the yarn I don't think I'll ever use.
I've a yarn to review today, since I decided that in honor of it being my Year Of Lace I had to cast on a laceweight project.
I picked up three skeins of Cascade Yarns Alpaca Lace at the LYS when I was visiting my sister in Rochester
it's a gorgeously subtle toned spring green, with hints of blue and yellow winking throughout. The color grabbed me first, but when I picked it up, I simply was unable to put it down. I kept telling myself, "I don't need more laceweight--I never knit with it, I have 5000 yards of it at home, I don't need it..." but it stayed in my hand, and that's because it's ridiculously soft. It feels like a cloud and weighs almost nothing--in fact the cat carried off one ball that was as big as his head, just because he could (no damage done). I immediately cast it on as a Pamuya, a pattern I got for the holidays, but after about 10 rows I knew 2 things. Firstly, I was using needles that were too large--size 2s--and secondly, that I wanted it more than anything to be made into tiny green leaves of soft utter buttery perfection.
So, even though I'd made 1.5 Harunis, and still had that half one on the needles (in a gorgeous brown linen--I'll show you another day), I cast this one on. And for a while it was perfection. The wee leaves developed, one enchanting crisp shape after another. The tonal yarn flickered unvaryingly, without pooling or flashing. The softest halo developed around the product--another characteristic of alpaca--and the whole thing weighed almost nothing, felt like a dream.
Now I have 500 tiny green stitches on the needles and I'm not even done with the first of the three balls. It takes 10 minutes or more to purl across the back, and I'm supposed to use half of my yardage on tiny green leaves before I begin to develop the scalloped flowery large leaf edging of the Haruni. A thousand curses upon deceptively seductive laceweights. So much work! I hope it's worth the effort.
This yarn is worth putting in a lot of time, but me being me, I have the attention span of a gnat. It's not going anywhere. It's the
Of course maybe that's because I got distracted and knitted 1.5 baby cardigans, 1.25 socks, and .75 of a dishcloth, a pair of slippers, 3 mittens, and an owl puff. Oops?
