Edinburgh Yarn Festival 2017

Oh my goodness. I went to EYF again this year and my head just about exploded. I love EYF. This year's festival was fantastic - so many incredible yarns and people! I went on Saturday, which was supposedly quieter than Friday, but it was still heaving.

This year I brought the Bean with me, strapped to my chest in the carrier, and I was exhausted before we even started. In the middle of our day we had a nice rest in the Podcast Lounge where I chatted with some lovely people and he had a nap. (I stupidly left my knitting in the bag I dumped in the cloakroom. Fail.) I found some new podcasters to check out and I gushed awkwardly at Louise of KnitBritish, whose podcast I enjoy very much. It's kept me company during many marathon nursing sessions since the Bean's birth and inspired me quite a lot. (She was very gracious and hopefully not creeped out. I have an introvert's fear of coming across like a weirdo, which I think makes me even more awkward when introducing myself to people I admire.)

But the marketplace! The marketplace!

Long-time readers may recall that last year I was strategic. I made a focused shortlist of things to consider buying, and oddly enough I pretty much stuck to the list. This year? Focus is in short supply. I couldn't come up with a shortlist, although I scrolled through the list of vendors repeatedly attempting to do so. Never mind.

I came out with this:

Travelknitter BFL Supersock in Raspberry Beret and Puddled Iron; Phileas Yarns Wanderlust DK in Tamegroute; project bag from Little Grey Girl; book by Tin Can Knits

Some yarn, project bag, a book. A smallish haul, but I am pleased with it. Normally I am all about the yarn at yarn festivals, but this year I found myself looking at other stuff more. Since I don't have much knitting time or ability to focus these days, my existing stash has been weighing on me. I have so much lovely yarn, but it sits there waiting for me. And as it sits, and sits, my goals for it change. Also I haven't used any of th yarn I bought last year at EYF despite my focus. So it feels good to add a few beautiful skeins to the stash this year but not to go overboard.

I realised that I need to stock up on zipper project bags because The Bean can now reach my knitting table and pull my drawstring bags down to play with them. He doesn't understand zippers yet (I know this will come with time), so I don't mine if he plays with a zippered pouch. Yes, I could sew one, but do I have the time? So I bought one and I love it. My current, largely neglected, sock project now lives there.

The yarn? Apparently I'm into BFL right now, since all the yarn I bought has it. BFL is great. The current plan for the Phileas yarn is His Golden Lair by Kourtney Robinson. I have had this pattern for a long time but never found the right yarn for it. I may have to fiddle with it a bit since it's written for worsted weight and I have DK. No plans for the Travelknitter yet. I could conceivably knit socks with it, since BFL/Nylon will be pretty sturdy. I suspect I'll go for some neckwear, though.

Wheee. What a day. I left the festival incredibly overwhelmed but also inspired to make better use of my limited crafting time. By the way, I finally started a public Instagram for my crafty endeavours: predictably, @goodenoughknits. You will find more EYF photos and enthusiasm there.

EYF round-up

The Edinburgh Yarn Festival happened and I bought many things. Let's see how I did.

Plan: buy buttons for two baby cardigans.
Result: two sets of cute buttons from Textile Garden

I've sewn on the owl buttons and I'm working on the purple ones today. I find sewing buttons so tedious, but the result is worth it. Look for an FO post for these two cardigans soon!

Plan: buy yarn for Liesl.
Result: three skeins of Triskelion Elmet Aran (this particular yarn isn't on Ravelry yet, link is to other yarns from this company)



Triskelion Yarns blew me away and were my favourite discovery of this year. Beautiful rainbow colours in really interesting, gorgeous yarn blends. The one I bought is BFL/Masham. I don't know anything about Masham sheep, but the yarn is fabulous - a bit rustic, but also smooth. Looks to be hard-wearing. The colour is a beautiful forest green that matches some buttons I already have - yay for button stash-down! Can't wait to knit with it and I'd love to try some of their other bases.


Badly lit picture of the fantastic Triskelion stall.

Plan: Wollmeise
Result: So much Wollmeise
I thought I'd go for Lace-garn and DK, but in the end I went for Lace-garn and Pure.


The lace yarn I bought is the purplest I've ever seen. (Do not be fooled if the photo makes it look blue). Colourway: Der letzte versuch. This will be some kind of cardigan, pattern to be determined. It feels heavy for laceweight - more of a light 4-ply.


Wollmeise Pure in the Sabrina colourway. This is actually teal, not grey/blue/green. TEAL. SO MUCH TEAL. Two skeins should be enough for a sweater, and I'm thinking of making Low Tide by Tin Can Knits. (I bought the book containing this pattern at EYF last year, so things come full circle.) I got these skeins wound by my good friends volunteering at the yarn-winding station - £1 per skein, proceeds went to the Teapot Trust, a charity providing art therapy to chronically ill children. Everybody wins!

Browsing the Wollmeise stall was certainly an experience.



So much colour! Gaaah! I stopped there first just because of the location, and I almost didn't leave... I'm excited to knit with the yarn I bought since it's beautiful and feels so different from other merino yarns I've tried. It's very sturdy and tightly-spun. We'll see how it knits up.

Plan: buy a gradient set.
Result: a cake of merino/silk laceweight from Bilum



This is Pukpuk by Bilum, a Hungarian yarn company I'd never heard of. They had lots of gorgeous gradients, as well as solids available. I'm not sure what this will become, but I've had a running list of gradient-suitable shawl patterns, so will look to that first. I don't often knit with laceweight, but I have enjoyed doing so in the past.

Verdict: it's a miracle! I pretty much stuck to my plans, even if I did go over my suggested budget by a little. I didn't come home with any single skeins of sock yarn this time, though there was much loveliness to be seen and prodded around the marketplace. Guess I'm satisfied with the loveliness in my house at the moment. Though I'd better get knitting if I want there to be space for more EYF yarn next year...

Edinburgh Yarn Fest planning

I'm heading out to the Edinburgh Yarn Festival later today. This is pretty much the highlight of my yarn year, and I am so lucky it's local to me. I always find these events a bit overwhelming, though, so I try to plan before I get there... and then I usually fail to stick to my plans and come home with all sorts of unexpected lovelies. Seriously, the vendor list for this year is so insane. Going to try not to hyperventilate when I get through the gates.

Last year I was on stash-down when the yarn fest rolled around, but yarn fest purchases were on my list of exemptions. I still managed to come home with four single skeins of beautiful sock yarn that I have not yet used. (I used a little bit of one of them for a baby hat - and I have plans for the rest of it, but otherwise these lovelies are still waiting for projects.)

Let's take a look at my best-laid plans for this year.

Non-yarn items:

Buttons for two baby cardigans.
My Puerperium and Little Coffee Bean are both entirely finished except for buttons, and typically I have nothing suitable in my rapidly expanding button box. There are a few vendors there that will have buttons - I'm particularly excited to check out Textile Garden - so I'm sure I'll find some great things.

ALL THE YARNZ:

Yarn for Liesl.
Ever since I frogged my old version of this cardigan years ago because it had stretched out, I've been meaning to make another. With my current shape, I think it would be super useful - for the first time in my life I actually think I look good in cardigans that are only buttoned at the top! If I add buttons all the way down like I did last time, it should continue to be useful once the baby is out. Plus, I remember it being a really quick knit, and I would love to make a quick sweater for myself before the baby arrives. As a bonus, I have some great buttons for this already, so I'll try and get some yarn to match so I can work on using my button stash.

Some Wollemeise.
This is my first chance to buy Wollemeise in person. Not going to pass this up. I'd like to pick up a skein of lace, since the yardage on those is amazing and I might be able to make a whole sweater out of it. I'm also considering getting some DK for a second attempt at Evenflow, but we'll see what I can find!

A gradient set.
I'll see what I see, but there's bound to be something beautiful. I've had my eye on several patterns for gradient shawls etc lately, so I'd like to get some suitable yarn.

I'm looking forward to checking out Kate Davies new yarn, as well as Ysolda's, and I'm sure to spend some quality time perusing the Old Maiden Aunt stall.

Notice I have no "single skeins of sock yarn" listed on my shortlist. Will that stick? Unlikely. I'll report back with my success / massive failure later on!

Are you going to EYF? If you see me, give me a shout. (I'm the one in the Raiun cardigan with a 33-week bump!)



Bring on the yarn fumes!

2015 knitting recap

Here's what I made in 2015 - a paltry 9 finished objects! I think I finish fewer things every year. Ah well, it's not about quantity, right? I had a lot going on this year that curtailed my knitting output. Knittingwise, I attempted several sweaters that I abandoned in various states of non-completion... I have some frogging to do, but maybe this year that yarn will become something! Still, I'm pleased with the things I made this year.



Top row: Gidday Baby by Georgie Hallam, Arya Mitts by Patti Waters, Cinnamon Stone Shawl by Verybusymonkey

Second Row: Itaca by Stephen West, Varia by Alex Tinsley, Raiun by Kirsten Johnstone

Third row: Fleegle heel socks, Tauriel socks by Josiah Bain, Luna Viridis by Hilary Smith Callis.

Apparently this was the year I focused on accessories, even though as I said above I attempted a few sweaters. The cardigan I did manage to finish, Raiun, is my favourite FO of the year. I wear it all the time - it is an excellent transitional weather piece in this land of unpredictable temperatures. Plus, I'm really getting into open-fronted cardigans (more on this later.)

I had made myself some goals for 2015, so let's see how I managed.

2015 goals
1. Stash down, with a few exceptions.

Exception 1: I will buy yarn to make a Pomegranate sweater. Bought yarn, decided to make Even Flow instead due to newfound love of open-fronted cardigans, abandoned because I think the pattern needs a smooth semi-solid yarn instead.

Exception 2: I will buy yarn at the Edinburgh Yarn Festival and/or the yarn crawl, should anything unmissable jump out at me. But I will show restraint! Restraint at EYF? Debatable. haha. I came home with 4 more skeins of hand-dyed sock yarn which I needed like a hole in the head. But they are so pretty and I love them.

Exception 3: I will buy yarn to make gifts if I don't have anything appropriate in my stash. Bought yarn for Itaca, Varia, and Gidday - over third of my projects were apparently gifts this year, since the Fleegle Heel socks were also a gift though made from stash.

In the end stashing down didn't really happen because my exceptions were not very restrictive. I didn't keep a good tally of yardage in/out, but here it is roughly.

Projects knit from stash: 6 (5 one-skein sock yarn projects and one sweater quantity)
Projects cast-on immediately with 2015 yarn purchases: 3 multi-skein projects
Skeins bought with no project in mind: 4 sock yarn, 1 SQ for Pomegranate that turned out not to be for that and is languishing in the frog pond, 4 extra skeins of yarn I intended for Gidday but didn't like the colour combinations so put on hold for something else.

So I didn't quite break even this year. I did knit from stash more than I realised, and I stuck to my non-restrictive rules, so not a total failure. But not really a resounding success either. Ah well!

2. Finish allocating yarn to patterns in my Stash Match project, including my sweater-quantities. Haha FAIL. I did two Stash Match posts this year: Sock Yarn and Laceweight. This leaves me three more to do. I valiantly tried to decide on my alapca stash projects in December but could not come to a final decision, so expect a post on this some time in 2016. I am also debating destashing some of the other two categories to make space in my house because I can't see myself ever using some of this yarn.

So that was 2015! I'm due a real FO post on the Gidday cardigan, plus I have the first FO of 2016 to share, and some news on WIPs. Plus some goals for 2016. Yikes. Hope your 2015 was delightful and productive in crafty and non-crafty ways!

Yarn dyeing with onion skins

Since my experiment with tea-dyed yarn a few years ago, I've been curious about what else I can use to dye yarn. A member of my knitting group suggested onion skins, so I started looking into it. Upon finding out that onion skins can dye without a mordant, I set out to give it a try.

It took me several months to collect enough onion skins - I didn't have a precise amount I was aiming for, but I'd read that more is better. We tend to use yellow/brown onions, so those are the skins I saved. I collected them until I was fed up. I didn't weigh them, so I can't say how much I actually had in the end. Just call it a shedload.

To prepare the dye solution, I tried to shove all skins into my too-small pot, let them simmer for about an hour, and then strained the skins out. Boiled onion skins smell pretty terrible, FYI. I was surprised at how red the dye solution was.

I let the solution cool a little while I soaked my yarn. Since I am technically on stash down I couldn't buy any new yarn, so I used some undyed 4-ply alpaca that I had in my stash. Then I put the yarn in the pot and started simmering it again. The picture above shows the colour once I had put my yarn in - the yarn started taking up colour really quickly.

After simmering it for about 45 minutes, I was sick of the boiled onion skin fumes, so I turned it off and let it cool. There was still plenty of colour in the dye bath, though it was a bit lighter than at the beginning. If I was dedicated, I probably could have saved the rest of the dye and used it again on something else. Or maybe I could have used fewer onion skins to begin with.

Picture above is what I ended up with.

Oh hey, it's brown! Surprise, surprise.

When I washed the yarn it lost a bit of colour, but not too much - the water became tinged yellow. It looked much more orange/red when wet, but it dried to be a light orange-y brown. My first thought when I looked at it dry was that it was exactly like my tea-dyed yarn. Upon comparing the two, however, I see that they are quite different.

See my tea-dyed sock with my onion-dyed yarn below. The sock is darker and less red/orange, though it does have reddish undertones that don't come through well in the photo.

Tea sock with Onion yarn. A Study in Contrasts.

My problem now is what to knit with this yarn! It's a delightfully soft, delicate 100% alpaca 4-ply. Not suitable for socks - really, it would be best around the neck! It's not a colour I like to wear near my face, though. It may have to wait for a contrasting skein of alpaca to join my stash (next year, perhaps?) and become something striped to mediate the orange-y brown-ness of it. Any ideas?

I didn't follow any particular tutorials to the letter, but here are a few links that helped me figure it all out:
Ways of the Whorl
It's a Stitch Up
Lion Brand
Folk Fibers

Altogether it was a fun experiment. Maybe I'll try red onion skins some time!

Edinburgh Yarn Festival 2015

How lucky I am to have such a festival in the city where I live!

EYF 2015 was this past weekend, and it did not disappoint. I didn't take any classes, but I sure exercised my stash-down exception. Wheee! As is typical, I hardly took any photos, and most of them are badly lit / blurry. Here's a glimpse of the WestKnits / Ysolda stall, though, festooned in beautifully mad colourful shawls. That sums up the yarn festival for me: beautiful and mad.



Almost as soon as I arrived, I visited my friends at the charity yarn-winding table. EYF's charity of choice this year was the Teapot Trust, who provide art therapy to chronically ill children. EYF volunteers wound skeins into cakes for a donation to the trust, but the Teapot Trust also had a table of gift items for sale to raise funds. I bought a pair of earrings shaped like teapots from them because they were so cute.



Then I went and bought yarn. And more yarn. I had a short list of projects to buy for, as per my stash down exception, but I was blinded by the pretties, so I didn't really stick to it.

There was so much beautiful stuff, much of it from companies I'd heard of but never seen in real life, and some of it from dyers I'd never heard of.

First up, Old Maiden Aunt. Obviously, I knew I'd spend time digging through the piles of loveliness since I'm a big fan. I ended up with this skein of 4 ply merino in the Crazy Ivan colourway. (Spot the Firefly reference.) It's impossible to describe or photograph, but think purple, teal, blue, green, and red all in subtle layers. Like an oil slick, only not shiny.



Next, Easy Knits. This is a new-to-me dyer, which so many insane vibrant colours. Again, I ended up with merino 4 ply:



The neon green is a bit outside my normal colour range, but it just called to me.

Finally, I stopped at Eden Cottage Yarns, and picked up some more merino 4 ply (sensing a theme?) in a lovely faceted charcoal gray.



I didn't intend to buy solely merino sock yarn, but that's what happened. Oh well! Sometimes you just have to roll with it. As of now, the only skeins that have been assigned to a project are the neon green Easyknits and the Eden Cottage - I plan on using them together in a Pendulum shawl.

The festival seems like it was a roaring success, and I look forward to next time! Maybe I'll even take some classes. Maybe by then I'll have made some more space in my stash. Haha.

Yarn as decor

I bought this bell jar the other day. It was kind of an impulse purchase, only not really - I did go home and think about it first before going back the next day to buy it. I'm often a bit skeptical of the whole faux-vintage-kitsch thing, but I thought it would look perfect on a shelf in our hallway filled with yarn. And it does (not pictured in situ, because no natural light.) Because I definitely don't have a shortage of pretty yarn, and it's nice to have some of it on display instead of packed away in a closet. (As mentioned, the hallway gets no natural light, so hopefully there won't be much fading - but in any case, I plan to rotate out skeins regularly. Hopefully because I'll be using them!)

How do you store your yarn? Is any of it on display?

Stash Match: Sock Yarn

Last year I set out to match my stash yarn to patterns so it wouldn't languish indecisively forever more. I managed to allocate my 4-ply "Too Pretty For Socks" yarn, and I'm well on my way to using it for its intended purpose. (By which I mean, I've completed two projects and started a third. I'll get there.)

Today I'm finally getting around to my next category: Sock Yarn (aka "Pretty enough for socks," I guess.) The yarns in this category are no less pretty than my un-sock yarn, but probably/hopefully more durable.



Top to Bottom:

Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock: I've been holding on to this for a long time, since people keep telling me it is the ultimate sock yarn. I might have put it on a pedestal, just a little, so I've found it difficult to commit to a pattern. Also, it is heavily variegated - fortunately (or unfortunately) there are loads of interesting patterns out there especially for this kind of yarn. After much internal debate, I've settled on Mad Color Weave by Tina Lorin. I'll re-evaluate if it pools strangely when I start, though.

Yarn Yard Cairn: I have had this yarn almost as long as I've lived in Edinburgh. (4ish years). It is time that I knitted it up! It's quite dark, so choosing a pattern that would show through was difficult. I've settled on Torrent by Tin Can Knits, since I think the lace will show up even in the dark colour.

Hand-dyed red: I believe this is 75/25% wool/nylon. Dyed with Wilton's icing gel colours, it initially turned out the colours of canned salmon. Eeeeh not really what I was going for. Then I dumped most of the rest of the red dye into the pot and there was much rejoicing. I think it will look awesome as Blueberry Bubbles by Thayer Preece Parker. Or perhaps strawberry bubbles, in my case. I'm looking forward to a sock with a lot of stockinette but a goodly portion of detail as well.

Hand-dyed tea/brown:
Probably 75/25 wool/nylon. I dyed it using a shedload of teabags a few years ago, and it has been waiting for a project ever since. I actually started knitting Hedgerow with this yarn, but I just wasn't enjoying it, so I frogged and thought some more. The winner came upon me suddenly - not from my favourites or queue, but from the new Knitty: Tauriel. ALL THE CABLES. This is certainly not television knitting, but I'm enjoying it so far.



What are your favourite sock patterns?

Stash Match: Too Pretty for Socks

Earlier this year I copped out on on blog week by introducing my Stash Match project. And then entirely failed to follow through. Ooops. It has been very difficult coming to a decision about these skeins! Anyway, here is the first post dedicated to assigning patterns / projects to my Too Pretty For Socks category of stash.

For me the obvious choice for pretty sock-weight yarn is neckwear; however, I always feel like I have too much and should try something else. Out of curiosity, I gathered all the scarves/shawls/shawlettes/cowls I could find and put them together.



The resulting pile is smaller than I imagined! I'd say that is far from an excessive amount of neckwear and I could totally get away with knitting some more. Nonetheless, I would like to branch out to include other accessories, like hats and mitts.

The Searching

I began with my existing queue and favourites. I reasoned that my favourites list already included many awesome patterns I had picked out from the mass that is Ravelry. (I also added loads of things to both of these ists over the course of my searching. But anyway.)

Ravelry's advanced search  / pattern browser function is awesome, and I have used it extensively to prepare this post. Also saved searches on Ravelry have been very useful. Here are a few of my saved searches:

Searching my favourites on Ravelry for shawls, scarves, and cowls, in 4-ply and sportweight yields 102 results, although this includes some that I have already made, as well as some I never want to make but just think are pretty/impressive/awesome when someone else makes them. The same search in my queue yields 7 results.

A similar search for handwear in my favourites has 51 results, and in my queue, 7 results.

And for headwear: 21 results in favourites, and before starting this exercise there were NONE in my queue, but now there are 2 results.

Obviously I'm a serial-favouriter, but I don't think about making hats as much as everything else. As it turns out, I rarely wear hats in the winter here since I'm always expecting it to get colder and it hardly ever does. That doesn't mean I shouldn't wear hats, though - 4-ply hats might be the perfect solution.

The Stash/Yarn Mismatch

A problem I came up against is that my stash doesn't really match a lot of my favourited patterns. For example, my favourites show that I'm obsessed with striped shawls, especially since making Color Affection last year. I also love colourwork mittens. Both of these types of projects require two or more contrasting colours of yarn used together. Unfortunately, much of the yarn I have is too similar in colour-value - if used together, the stripes or colour motifs would get lost. Or if not, the yarns have different textures and I don't think they would work well together. I may yet raid some of my yarn in the Sock Yarn category to pair with this yarn in order to have stripes... or I may end up buying contrasting yarn to maximize stripe / colourwork potential. In the mean time, I am going to make my matches in solid colours for now, and if the stash augments / changes, I will re-evaluate. This decision cuts down my matching options considerably, but there are still lots of patterns to wade through.

Despite this mismatch, I've come up with some stash-pattern matches that I can get behind.

The Matching

As a reminder, here is the stash I am trying to match in this segment:



The following yarns are ordered from top to bottom in the photo.

Malabrigo Sock (402 m) (Stash link)
Song of the Sea, by Louise Zass-Bangham. Gorgeous lacy cowl that perfectly fits the yarn, even down to the colourway "aguas." I previously posted about starting this project, and it is going well so far.


Peek of Malabrigo waves

SweetGeorgia Cashluxe Fine (366 m) (Stash link)
Luna Viridis, by Hilary Smith Callis, 366 m. I'm intrigued by the shape/construction of this cowl. It is supposed to fit like a shawlette wrapped around the neck, except it's a closed loop so it won't come undone or slide off. The Cashluxe Fine is so incredibly soft that it has to be worn around my neck - not negotiable.

Natural Born Dyers BFL-Nylon High Twist Sock (370 m) (Stash link)
Catkin hat, by Kate Davies, (160 m). I adore the Catkin sweater, but I may never get around to making it, so I want to make the matching hat just in case. I think the colour and texture of this yarn suits this pattern well: a bit rustic, earthy semi-solid, not tightly spun. Hopefully the cables will show up, but the character of the yarn will also show through.



Rye / Ruista ranteen, by Hanne Katajamäki. I'll have yarn leftover, so I also plan to make matching mitts. This is a simple fingerless mitt pattern that will let me use some of my button stash, as well! The ones shown above I bought at Woolfest a few years ago and they complement the green yarn quite well. It may be a tight squeeze for yarn, but I can always shorten the mitts slightly. I am also considering making mitts that have the same cable from Catkin on them - shouldn't be too hard to modify some plain mitts.

Old Maiden Aunt Merino/Bamboo 4-ply (366 m) (Stash link)
I really struggled to come up with a pattern for this yarn for some reason. The yarn is soft and a bit fuzzy and I expect it will only become more fuzzy as it wears. I finally decided on the Ice Storm Mitts, by Louise Zass-Bangham, (125-151 m), and matching Ice Storm Snug Cowl, (209 m). I'm hopeful that the textured stitches will still look good when they get fuzzy. Yardage may be a bit tight; in addition, the patterns call for sport weight yarn, so I may have to do some adjustments for gauge.

Old Maiden Aunt Superwash Merino 4ply (366 m) (Stash link)
This is the greenest yarn ever and I absolutely love it. My love for this colour and this yarn has seriously impeded my decision-making. I have been caught in the trap of searching for the one perfect pattern, and nothing seems good enough. Finally, I've made a decision (subject to change, of course).


ZOMGGREEN!

The Cinnamon Stone Shawl, by verybusymonkey, (338-366 m), immediately intrigued me with its interesting textural lace. I keep coming back to it, and it think it would look great in this yarn - plenty of texture, but also plenty of stockinette to let the yarn shine by itself.

Cherry Tree Hill Supersock (411 m) (Stash link)
Arya Mitts, by Patti Waters, (343-457 m). I love the neat cables on these. The yarn seems quite sturdy, so I hope it will hold up well as mitts. This is on the variegated end of semi-solid, but I think the colours will show up in short bursts / flecks when knitted up, and so not interfere with the cables. At least, I hope so, but we'll see!

Fyberspates Sheila's Sock (365 m) (Stash link)
Flavia Hat, by Beth Kling (221-250 m). It's been a while since I did any truly complex cabling, and I feel now is the time. The yarn's semi-solid colours should play nicely with the intricate cabling on this hat. I should have some yarn leftover, so may make matching mitts. Perhaps something like Totally Cabled Long Fingerless Mitts by Linda Lehman, only not so long since I won't have enough yarn. Or maybe something based on the cables in the hat.

Shibui Sock (175 m) (Stash link)



Quilted Lattice Mitts, by Jennifer Elaine, (137-183 m). I know, I recently made a pair of socks in this exact stitch pattern. I am not bored of it, though, and it works really well with variegated yarns, so why not go for the mitts? I may change up the pattern a bit to make it more herringbone... or I may not.

So there you have it. Phase one of Stash Match is complete, and now my queue shows it. Allocating yarn to patterns has been difficult but somewhat liberating. It's nice to feel organised. Now, I need to get knitting if I'm ever going to start/finish any of these before I get distracted again.

Stay tuned for the next Stash Match post, in which I will look at my suitable-for-socks sockweight yarn.

5KCBWDAY2 - Introducing Stash Match

It's the second day of Knitting and Crochet Blog Week, and I am already veering off-piste. Apologies to Eskimimi whose well-thought-out topics are about to get re-interpreted/ignored! Rather than write a dating profile for an FO as per today's topic prompt, I'm using today's post to launch a series of posts I've been pondering for quite a while. You see, it's my stash that needs some love, not my FOs. Hence, Stash Match.

Stash Match: What it is
(I didn't intentionally steal the phrase from anyone else, though some quick googling yields it on a quilting blog. I hope she doesn't mind.)

Over the course of an undetermined number of blog posts, I will attempt to allocate all (or most) of my stashed yarn to patterns / ideas for future knitting. I reserve the right to change my mind about these stash-pattern matches, but having a concrete list rather than a nebulous cluster of vague thoughts will make me feel a lot more organised.

Why I am stash-matching

In theory, I prefer to buy yarn with a pattern in mind. For sweater quantities of yarn, this works quite well in practice. For single skeins of pretty sock yarn, not so much - rather than a specific pattern, I end up telling myself "This could be a shawl(ette). Or it could be socks." That is not untrue; however, it is also not helpful! I end up with lots of beautiful yarn not allocated to a project, and when I need something for a particular project, I just buy more - invariably, nothing in my stash at the time seems right.

I try not to let it bother me too much, since pretty yarn sitting in stash is pretty yarn, but I think I have hit the point where I need to go through it all and at least tentatively allocate yarn for specific projects. After all, I have an extensive queue and favourites list to draw from - surely there are some perfect yarn to pattern pairings just waiting to be recognised! I can always change my mind if something even more awesome comes along.

The Candidates 

Most of my stash is in the photo below. Not included are sweater quantities of yarn, most leftovers from other projects, and handspun. (I have some handspun, but I didn't spin any of it myself, so don't get excited). And anything else I couldn't find or forgot about.



After much deliberation, I have grouped it into rough categories as follows:

Green: Too pretty for socks
Cyan: WTF yarn
Yellow: Destined for colourwork
Pink: Alpaca
Blue: Sock yarn
Orange: Laceweight

The Green section is the one that is taunting me the most right now. I have deemed these Too Pretty for Socks because from my perspective they are unsuitable for socks for at least one reason. Some of them aren't superwash, some of them are too delicate, and all of them are so beautifully dyed that I can't imagine hiding them in shoes.



From top to bottom, it includes the following:
Malabrigo Sock (402 m)
SweetGeorgia Cashluxe Fine (365 m)
Natural Born Dyers BFL-Nylon High Twist Sock (370 m)
Old Maiden Aunt Merino/Bamboo 4-ply (366 m)
Old Maiden Aunt Superwash Merino 4ply (366 m)
Cherry Tree Hill Supersock (411 m)
Fyberspates Sheila's Sock (365 m)
Shibui Sock (175 m)

So there it is. Team Too Pretty for Socks is up first for stash-matching. After blog week, I will be back with a post talking about the matches and how I came up with them. In the meantime, let me know if you have any brilliant ideas for the above yarn. Do you need to do a stash match, or is your stash already perfectly allocated to patterns/projects?

WIP: Crystalline Socks

I have a WIP to share!

These are Crystalline Socks by Cailyn Meyer. I cast on New Year's Day, according to Ravelry. They hibernated for a while since I needed the needles for a secret gift project. Now that the secret project is done (stay tuned), these are back on the needles.



I'm really excited about these socks. The stitch pattern is fun to knit - it holds my interest but isn't too complex, and I love watching it develop. It also feels like it goes very quickly. A great choice for variegated yarns, although I'm finding this yarn isn't as garishly variegated as I expected. The yarn is 75% wool / 25% nylon that I dyed using Wiltons icing colours a few years ago, so I'm glad I've finally found a project for it.



Check out more WIPs at Tami's Blog.

Stashing UP: this month in yarn acquisition

I've never been on an official stash-down - mostly I am fairly restrained in my yarn purchasing, so I haven't felt the need to stop buying yarn entirely just to bring stash down to manageable size. Yet. The last few weeks have really been an exercise in stashing UP, though.

First, I went to the St Abbs Wool Festival at the beginning of March, in the picturesque seaside village of St Abbs in the Scottish Borders. I had never been to this festival before, and I was pleasantly surprised at how much awesomeness they managed to pack into the two small venues. It was fabulous. Not only was there yarn aplenty, but there were also loads of amazing buttons, weaving, spinning, and felting. It was also a very sunny, gorgeous day - I managed to forget my camera, but I wish I hadn't!

I came away with a skein of Natural Born Dyers BFL/Nylon High Twist Sock. (And some buttons, but button-stashing is for another post).



As the company name suggests, the yarn is dyed with natural dyes. I am always astounded to see the range of great colours people can get using this kind of dye. My photo doesn't do it justice at all, of course. It is a semi-solid with many different shades of green.

Then, I received some yarn as a fabulous birthday present. When I heard that SweetGeorgia was going to be at Unravel, a wool festival in Farnham, I made a special request to my mother-in-law, since I knew she would be attending the festival as an exhibitor. I've drooled over SweetGeorgia yarns on the internet for a long time without committing to purchasing any, and I'd never seen it in person - MIL got me a skein of Cashluxe Fine, which is Merino/Cashmere/Nylon sock yarn. It is quite possibly the softest thing I have ever touched. Amazing! For once, the colour (Wisteria) is pretty accurate in the photo:



As if that weren't enough yarn for a year, never mind a month, I went on a Yarn Crawl this past weekend with my knitting group. Edinburgh has had an explosion of independent yarn shops in the last couple of years, so why not try to visit them all in a day? Sounds like a plan! (I even brought my camera along to document the proceedings, and then got so distracted by the pretties that I didn't take any pictures. Oops.) We ended up visiting four shops, missing out the two department stores that have yarn, and one of the larger shops - otherwise we wouldn't have had enough time. We also feasted on delicious Malaysian food, ate gelato outside in the cold wind, and ended up in a pub. (As you do.) But! As may be expected, yarn came home with me.

Our first yarn stop was Be Inspired Fibres, a beautiful shop that opened last summer. Shamefully, I hadn't been to visit yet - however, I'm sure I will be back frequently. Despite vocally vowing to stick to my plan for the day, which was to buy yarn for a sweater and not random skeins of pretty sock yarn, I failed at the first shop. Some Malabrigo Sock called to me and I could not leave without it.


The colourway is Aguas - watery blue-gray-greens that are more complex than pictured. (Truly, it is very different than the Natural Born Dyers' skein pictured above, even if the photos deny it.) This may seem like blasphemy, but I've never worked with Malabrigo Sock before. It's obviously incredibly soft, but it seems more substantial than I was expecting, given Malabrigo's reputation for buttered-kitten-softness. (This substantialness is a very good thing, in my books.) Anyway. There is no way I am making socks out of something this soft and pretty, but more on that another time.

I didn't buy anything at the next two stops (K1 Yarns, and Kathy's Knits), although Kathy's Knits in particular is a favourite destination of mine for sweater yarn.

Then at our final stop, I finally got my sweater quantity that I had planned on:



Five skeins of Brigantia Luxury Double Knit, from Ginger Twist Studio, a shop that despite its small physical size manages to stock a huge range of fascinating yarns. (All of us on the yarn crawl fit in at once, but just barely!) I have never used this yarn before, but the colours are fantastic, and it feels sturdy enough for my sweater-knitting needs, so I have high hopes for it.

Phew. It has been a while since I acquired so much yarn in such a short period of time, and it's a bit overwhelming! I'm excited about all these things, and some of them I have immediate plans for, so they won't linger in the stash for too long. Still, these acquisitions have made me realise that a good portion of my stash is just stash without any plans attached. I might need to remedy that soon.

4KCBWDAY4 - colour review

What are your favourite colours for knitted or crocheted projects. Have a think about what colours you seem to favour when yarn shopping and crafting.

Only after writing this part of your post should you then actually look to see what colours you have used in your projects. Make a quick tally of what colours you have used in your projects over the past year and compare it to the colours you have written about. Compare this, in turn, to the colours that are most dominant in your yarn stash – do they correlate?

Now think back to your house animal - do the colours you have chosen relate to your animal in anyway - if you are in the house of peacock, for example, are your projects often multicoloured and bright?

Part 1: The colours I think I use, according to my brain.

When knitting for myself I use lots of cool colours. Blue, green, purple, and variations thereupon. These are my favourite colours to wear, so it makes sense that I am always drawn to them in yarn. That said, I also love using colours that I don't wear - golden yellow and neon green, for example. I can't wear yellow near my face, but I can certainly wear it on my feet. Yay for yellow socks! I don't use many neutrals, even though I have made a few brownish things over the years.

Part 2: The colours I actually use, according to Ravelry

I've organised my project photos by year, and have made screenshots for the last few years just to make a good comparison, since I didn't finish that many things last year.


In 2013 so far I have knitted with yellow-orange, blue, teal, gray, and Noro (which is a colour in itself). What the screenshot doesn't show you is that there is purple in my Colour Affection as well.


In 2012 I used teal, purple, red, forest green, forest green, light minty blue, undyed/white, and green.


And in 2011 I used yellow-orange and blue, magenta, neon green, blue and purple, red, green, brown, blue, green, brownish-gray.

What this exercise tells me is, I forgot about red! How could I forget red? Red is a colour I have only developed a fondness for in the last few years. The red hat I made last year for my grandmother was the brightest red I've ever used - I wouldn't have chosen the colour for myself before, but now I actually want a bright red hat of my own. I also apparently use more neutrals than I thought. I kind of forgot about undyed yarn being neutral.

2011 was my most varied year in terms of colour use. I wonder if this is because I was unemployed and mostly buying yarn on sale. For the sake of being cheap, I took some colour risks. The magenta yarn I used for my Honeybee cardigan was incredibly cheap, and I definitely wouldn't have chosen that colour if choosing full price yarn. Similarly, the brown yarn I used for my lace-yoked cardigan was on sale. I quite like that shade of brown, but I'm not sure I would have bought a cardigan's worth at full price.

Part 3: Stash
I haven't made any screenshots of my stash, but you can look at it here. The photos aren't entirely representative of the stash, since I haven't taken pictures of some of the old stuff... and some of the stuff on the list I no longer have. But never mind. For the sake of unscientific analysis, here is the breakdown:

Total stash entries: 21
Red: 1
Blue: 4
Green: 6
Teal/blue-green: 2
Purple: 4
Natural/undyed: 2
Brown: 1
Gray: 1

Green wins! Blue and purple tie for second place! I think my current stash is pretty representative of my current colour tendencies, actually.

Part 4: Relate back to my knitting house
Well, since deciding the Hebridean sheep was my knitting spirit animal, I'm a bit stuck for representative colour. These sheep are blackish. As I have mentioned previously, I hardly ever use black yarn, although I do wear black. I'm totally willing to try it, though. Especially if it comes from a badass multi-horned sheep.

Swag

I promised to show off my Yarn Fest loot, so here it is.



Three skeins of Old Maiden Aunt Merino 4ply in Dreich, Jaded, and Bramble. I usually don't mind winding my own skeins, but I took advantage of a yarn-winding-for-charity service providing by enthusiastic volunteers at the festival because I wanted to cast on for Colour Affection as soon as possible. Not going to lie - seeing the OMA stuff in person blew my mind. After taking quite a while to work through the crowd to the OMA stall, I settled in crouching by a trunk of yarn, and was dazzled by all the potential colour combinations. I eventually settled on the above three. However, Lilith of OMA was wearing a Colour Affection when I went up to purchase the yarn, and I almost had to rethink my yarn choice yet again.

Yet another Old Maiden Aunt Merino 4ply - this time still in skein form, since I have no immediate plans for it. Colourway: Emerald City. I picked this one up and couldn't put it down, so it came home with me too.


Hint: it's way more luminous in real life.

And finally, a fabulous semi-solid red from Lioness Arts.



The yarn is King of the Jungle Sock (80% merino, 20% nylon) in the colourway Seeing Other People. Again, no concrete plans for this one yet, but it can just sit in my stash looking gorgeous for a while.

I know this might count as restrained shopping in some circumstances, but since I rarely buy more than one skein at a time of luxury yarn, this was a splurge for me. An exciting splurge, though - I don't feel at all bad about it, and you can't make me! :P

holiday yarn

I was given some yarn over the holidays this year.


Fyberspates Sheila's Sock in mixed purples - photo is colour accurate for once! This is meant for some kind of lush shawl to be determined. Possibly Magrathea, since I've wanted to get started ever since receiving the pattern in a summer swap. Or maybe Pear Drop from Saturday Treat, since I received the book for Christmas as well. Or any one of the many awesome shawl patterns out there that I have admired. I need some more scarf/shawls, definitely.


Fyberspates Scrumptious Aran in Midnight - darker blue than appears in the photo. No immediate project in mind for this one, though I might go with Almond Comfit from Saturday Treat, since this is the recommended yarn. It's a bit dark, though - I can't get that bright red out of my head. We shall see.


Noro Kureyon in colours I would never have picked for myself - I'm really enjoying it knit up, though, so stay tuned for the WIP.

BlaDiBlaMo?

It's November - have you enthusiastically committed to an unpronounceable, inappropriately abbreviated month-long activity yet? I've done NaNoWriMo once, NaBloPoMo a few times, but never the sweater one before. So this year, my challenge is to knit a sweater in the month of November.

Because I'm a slow sweater-knitter, for me to have any chance of success I knew I had to choose something fairly simple and use moderately heavy yarn. I've decided to knit the Ladies' Classic Raglan Pullover by Jane Richmond. If I manage it, maybe next year I'll try something more complicated, but for now Worsted/Aran weight stockinette seems like the best plan!



The yarn I bought is New Lanark Aran, in the delightful Blueberry colourway. New Lanark is a historic cotton mill village and world heritage site, whose mill now produces wool yarns. Shamefully, I've never been to visit, even though it's not that far from Edinburgh - maybe next year! This particular colourway is tweedy and deep - there are so many different colours there that combine to make a purpley-blue. Really, there's green and yellow, and all manner of blues, purples, and teals in there. I'm really looking forward to seeing it knit up.



Now I've got to swatch! What are you up to this November?