Yarndale 2016

I think I've finally recovered from my hangover.  I've been bingeing on yarn at Yarndale and it's taken me a few days to get back to normal.  We had a fabulous time at the festival.  It was just as busy as last year and so many lovely stands.  Everywhere you turned there was yarn.  It was heavenly.

Having dieted for so long, it was wonderful to just go and overindulge.  I largely kept to the wish list I had made before we set off but I did slip in quite a few treats.  So here's my collection of loveliness.

Isn't it wonderful.  I didn't spend as much as last year but I feel I spent my money more wisely this year.

Grace went with me again and this is her collection.

I bought some gorgeous skeins for shawls.

I love the colours and patterns of the Cuddlebums yarn, on the left.

This pretty sock yarn had to come home with me.

I also bought this lovely British Wool DK weight yarn for a cardigan.

The yarn colour is called turquoise but it actually looks greener than in the above photo.

I topped up my purchases with other bits and pieces that I can use in Fair Isle and I also bought an undyed skein of yarn that I want to dye up myself, which should be fun.

At Yarndale we met up with Instagram friends for a picnic.  The weather was a bit cool and there was no sign of the sun, but the meet up was fun so that was all that mattered.

I received lots of lovely compliments on my Lily the Pink cardigan which was very pleasing.

So now I'm going to be working my way through my haul.  Plenty to keep me quiet for a long time to come.  I'll also still be busting the stash I already had - that's an ongoing mission.  The day after we got back from Yarndale, I finished this shawl.

It was knitted with the last of the untouched yarn that was bought at Yarndale last year.  I love the colours in the yarn, so I'm currently using the leftovers to make some fingerless mittens.  Details of the shawl project can be found on Ravelry, here.

I hope you all had a lovely weekend and if you were at Yarndale, I hope that you managed to bag yourself some loveliness as well.

Exciting Times

September has proved to be a very eventful month so far.  At the beginning of the month my husband retired.  It was something we've been planning for quite some time, but even so, it's a big change in our lives which we are going to have to get used to.  The plan is for lots of holidays and days out, but I'm sure we'll settle into a slower routine over time.

As a celebration of his retirement, we had a holiday away with our daughters for a week. It's been a while since we've all been away together.  As a reminder of holidays gone by, we booked a holiday cottage in North Wales, in Pwllheli to be exact.

It was a wonderful week, I enjoyed every minute of it.  We had some lovely walks around the coastal paths on the Llyn Peninsula.  The landscape is amazingly beautiful and rugged.

Hell's Mouth

Mynydd Cilan

We had a paddle in the sea at Abersoch.

So cold!

And I was quite emotional at finding the gravestone of one of my ancestors in the church yard in the village of Llanengan.

Llanengan Church

Lovely old pub in the village of Llanengan

It was all over far too quickly, but now that work is a thing of the past, I'm looking forward to lots of time away.

Our holiday cottage

The cottage we stayed in was lovely, but the internet reception was poor so I'm trying, this week, to catch up.

Before I went away, I finished my Fair Isle cardigan.

I love the colours, but I'm a bit annoyed with myself that I didn't check my gauge properly.  The cardigan is a lovely slim fit, but maybe a bit too snug on the sleeves.  Never mind, it's still wearable but would be just that little bit better if there was a little bit of ease around the arms. Details of this project can be found on Ravelry, here.

I also completed the button-through skirt I had been wanting to sew.

I used leftover fabric from a dress I had made last year and buttons recycled from an old dress.

I was so pleased with how easy the button holes were to make.  I'll definitely have to make more of these skirts.

It's less than two weeks to go until Yarndale and I'm so looking forward to it.  My knitting mojo has deserted me lately and I suspect that the stash busting has had an impact on this.  It will be lovely to have an injection of new yarn.  I'm sure that will get the creative juices flowing again.  In the meantime, I'm knitting up a cardigan in some frogged yarn - not very inspiring but I've only got one more sleeve to do.  I'm now busy dreaming of the new yarn that'll be coming home with me shortly.

Have a good week everyone.

Where I'm At

April already, this year is just whizzing by.  It's a rainy day here today, so a quiet knitting day is planned.

I had a bit of a mad cast on, yesterday.  Having finished a number of projects earlier in the week, I felt I could treat myself to some new ones.

Firstly, I couldn't wait to start knitting some socks with the yarn Grace bought me for my birthday.  Just look at the gorgeous colours in this.

Totally delicious.  It's Wendy Roam Fusion in the Force colourway.  Here's what we have so far.

Toe cosies!  And even better, they match!  The colours are about to change to a lovely deep blue, so that's what I'm going to be working on this afternoon.

I've also cast on for another cropped cardigan.  Using this wool.

Yes the labels are correct, it was only £1 per 50g ball.  The wool has no label but it is soooooo soft.  I bought nine balls altogether when I was at Yarndale last year.  I've knit 6 rows of rib so far and it really is beautiful to knit with.

And then, just because I can, I cast on for another shawl.  Yes I now have more shawls than I need but I love knitting them and it's nice to have a variety of course.

I'm using Knit Global 4 ply yarn in the Summer Berries colourway - there's no way I can ever resist a colour that has "berries" in its name.  It'll be a simple feather and fan shawl, very easy to knit.

So that's my knitting projects all up to date.

As far as my stash busting goes, I'm pleased to say that March was a very successful month.  In total I busted 1410g of yarn, and that's allowing for the 200g of new yarn that found its way into the stash.  Obviously things were helped along by the generous donation of yarn to Grace, but it all counts.  So my running total of stash that has been busted since the weigh-in in February, is 2.165 kg - that's just under 5 lbs in imperial weights - so I'm very pleased.  It's 1/9th of my total stash.  It's all looking good for Yarndale later in the year!

I haven't mentioned my embroidery project for quite a while, so I thought I'd give a glimpse of where I'm at.  If you remember, I was embroidering 54 squares, while I was still 54.  And amazingly, I did get them all finished before my birthday.  I got into a lovely rhythm of a square a day, and it was a very pleasurable project to work on.

So now I have the task of joining them all.  I'm using the English Paper Piecing technique to make three inch squares.  I've tacked them all up and here they are.

Here's a close up of some of them.

Plenty of variety in them.  I'm now looking forward to planning the layout of the squares to make my wall hanging.  There's still a lot of work to be done, but it's coming along nicely.

And finally - gosh I have had a productive week - I made some spicy fruity biscuits.

They have nearly all gone, so delicious.  So that's me, keeping busy and enjoying my creative life.

Have a lovely weekend, may your days be filled with love and inspiration.

Losing Weight

After last week's weigh in of my yarn stash, I realised that I really need to take control of the situation.

Weighing the stash in kilograms doesn't mean that much to me, I'm a pounds and ounces girl.  18 kg, is it a lot?  18 doesn't sound like that big a number.  My husband brought me back down to Earth by telling me it's about 3 stones!!

Ok so I've been in denial - I'm a stashaholic!  In my defence, I've been knitting and crocheting, non-stop (and I do mean NON-STOP) for nearly 50 years - so that's a lot of yarn leftovers accumulated over the years.  And that's the main problem, a lot of the yarn I have is bits and pieces leftover from cardigans and sweaters I've knitted over the years.   I just can't bear to throw the bits out.  I've tended to ignore them, but now I'm going to tackle the problem.

By working on one box at a time, I'm going to sort through, use up or throw out the leftovers.  So from now on, I'm on a yarn diet.  My aim is to reduce the stash to half its current weight - yes, I want to lose 9 kg - and preferably by September, so that I can go to Yarndale with a clear conscience and treat myself by buying far too much yarn!

So easing myself gently into this, I started with one of the smallest boxes.  Here are the results of my first week of dieting.

Firstly I tackled some odds and ends of DK weight yarn.

I crocheted a coaster using my Sunny Days pattern.

Then I cleared out more bits by crocheting this cover for a wooden coat hanger.

A small basket got a makeover with this liner.

Then there were some very tiny bits and pieces of 4 ply yarn.

I used what I could to make some mini granny squares for my sock yarn blanket.

Grace had passed some of her leftover sock yarn (Wendy Roam Fusion) for me to make some mini granny squares and to knit a mini sweater to add to my bunting.

The remainder of this yarn will be passed back to Grace.

9g of chunky yarn has become a knitted scarf for Little Bear.

187g of unusable bits have been thrown out.

The total reduction for the week is 341g.  Not bad for now.  That was just one small box.  There are plenty more to work through but at least I've made a start.

If I reduce the amount of time spent sleeping and eating, and I knit a bit faster, you never know, I might just lose that weight after all.

The Big Weigh In

Well I finally plucked up the courage - and energy, to weigh up my entire yarn stash.  I'm following Linda's example (from Linda's Crafty Corner) and facing up to the truth - I'm also very curious to find out the actual numbers.

I've mostly been very good and haven't bought any yarn since my mad binge at Yarndale last year.  So I've been working my way through the stash, but it does seem never ending.  By weighing the stash, I felt that I could monitor the stash to see how quickly (or slowly) the stash goes down.

My stash is spread over five rooms; the study, the living room, the dining room, the storeroom and the small bedroom.  So first of all I gathered everything together in the living room.

I started with the smallest stash first, the one from the study (this is destined to become my craft room later in the year).

This box contains (very old) bits and pieces of novelty yarns and leftovers of chunky and lace weights.

This weighed in at 1155g.

Next the yarn currently residing in the living room.

This mostly is in bags and baskets and is the projects I'm working on at the moment.  There's 2 shawls, 2 cardigans and a granny square bag in the making.

The unworked yarn weighed in at 1949g.

Next, the dining room stash.

The hamper contains my Aran weight leftovers - I don't have any unused Aran in the stash.  There's a box of crochet threads and another of 4 ply leftovers.

This little lot weighed in at 3492g.

The storeroom stash next.

This is made up of my supply of 4 ply cottons, more crochet thread, yarn that has been frogged from old cardigans and sweaters, a large ball of purple Aran given to me recently from Grace from her leftovers and a bag of Stylecraft Special DK from a recent order.

This stash weighed in at 3945g.

Finally, the yarn stored in the small bedroom.

This is my serious stuff.  It's mostly acrylic DK with my stash of Jamieson and Smith wool, my sock yarn stash and the remaining Yarndale stash waiting to be used.

This weighed in at a healthy 7739g.

So the grand total of all the unworked yarn in my home at the moment is 18280g or 18.28kg.

That seems like quite a lot, but hang on a minute - what exactly is the definition of stash?

A significant proportion of the yarn I have is made up of leftovers, bits and pieces (and believe me, there's a fair bit of it that is just small pieces).  Many of these bits have been around for years and years, waiting to come in useful, but they are never going to be used in anything significant.  So I reckon, you can't count these as stash.

My Stylecraft Special DK and Bonus DK consists of a range of colours that I can dip into whenever I want.  I regard these as essential supplies, and as such they are topped up on a regular basis.  They are therefore 'stock' rather than stash.

The same can be said for my range of colours in the Jamieson and Smith wool (essential for Fair Isle knitting), my crochet thread (some of which is so old it belonged to my Grandmother) and my 4 ply cottons.

Then I don't think it's realistic to count frogged yarn as stash.  It has, after all been already knitted once.

So the actual, actual stash consists of sock yarn, the Yarndale purchases and the 4 ply I bought especially to make Eve's cardigan for her birthday.  This amounts to just over 2000g.  That's virtually next to nothing - I'm yarn impoverished!

I feel it's imperative I remedy this situation as soon as possible with a healthy injection of new yarn.  Don't you agree?