Deep Stash destashed

Deep Stash Half Marathon 2016 update:

Destashed yardage:  7,768.2
DSHM current yardage total:  8,149.1
DSHM yardage remaining:  14,923.4

If you want to know which yarns I have freed from my Craft Grotto and sent back into the world, read on.  If not, now you have time to read something truly useful.

As you can see above, I have released over 7700 yards of yarn so far during this half marathon.  This is yarn I didn't work into a project.  Sold or given away, it is now out of my house.  I'm glad to say I didn't have to throw any of it into the trash.

I don't have much time left in the year to winnow out more yarn, and I'm sure I will have to give up additional scads to meet the gap to 23,072.5 yards that my projects don't cover.  And I do have projects to write about.  Sweaters, y'all.  A few hats.  A couple pairs of socks.

And then the gap.  Oh, the gap.

So, some lucky soul at the DAV or Goodwill or some knitta friend(s) still will find stringy treasure they may or may not appreciate.

Like how some of this already destashed yarn was tough for me to appreciate, apparently.  Unger Fluffy?  What was I thinking?  I bought it because it was in a bargain bin, unwanted, like a basket of burgundy Persian cats I didn't have the cold heart to turn away.  I never did anything with it, though, or the lonely skein of Paton's Divine that is a cousin to the Tribble.  Both found homes this year, however, and I'm glad to have adopted them to better places.

The lace and the sock yarn were a little tough for me to let go.  I've used Sockotta at least twice before, and I love the colorways, but it's hard on my hands.  So, it left with my blessing.  Misti Alpaca Lace is a joy, but Christmas elbowed me into passing that delight on to another.

I'm not going to list all the departed yarn, complete with individual yardage counts, because I'm trying to preserve some respect for our time, but here they all are in a neat-o keen mosaic.

Honestly, I can't even tell any of this stuff is gone from the Grotto.  I smell another variation of the marathon in the works for next year.

Fitzgerald Scarf

Deep Stash Half Marathon 2016 update:

Fitzgerald Scarf yardage:  380.9
DSHM current yardage total:  380.9
DSHM yardage remaining:  22,691.6

I have more yardage to add from a pair of socks and some sold/given away destashing, but I'll post that later.



Ravelry Stats on my Fitzgerald Scarf project page.

The Fitzgerald ticked a few boxes for me.  Besides yardage for the half marathon, it's my donation to this year's Red Scarf Project campaign and my challenge during the Olympics while playing Ravelry.com's Ravellenics Games.  Both events need some explanation, I suppose.

Briefly, then...

The Red Scarf Project is part of a care package program for college students run by Foster Care to Success, America's College Fund for Foster Youth.  For the last several years, FC2S has included a red scarf in its Valentine's Day care packages sent to students who have aged out of the foster-care system.  I read about the program through the Now Norma Knits blog and have been making annual knitted contributions for the last six years.  If you're interested in making a red scarf for some chilly student, please read the guidelines.



The Ravellenic Games run concurrent to the Olympics and are an opportunity for fiber enthusiasts around the world to knit, crochet, spin, and weave on challenging projects as a celebration of the athletes from around the world doing the amazing things they do.  Much like the Olympics, the Ravellenics have events (Scarf Hockey, Afghan Marathon, Sock-Put) for which feats of astounding crafting are attempted.  Finished lines are crossed, virtual medals and laurels are awarded to all participants with completed projects, and warm fuzzies are felt.  It's been a fun way to sit and watch the games in Rio.

That said, this scarf nearly did me in.  Not because it's hard.  It is not.  It is, in fact, addictive.  But I started it halfway through the Olympics and had never finished a scarf of this magnitude (6 inches by 75.5 inches) in less than ten days.  This one took me seven, plus one day to block.  Rows flew by, but there were oh-so-many!  Two rows in each repeat require a couple stitches for every eleven to be completely off the needles, flapping in the air conditioning.  While you'd think that might be nerve-racking, it's not.  Those stitches stay put like good little kiddos until you need them again.



I had thought I would like to make a blanket with this pattern.  However, the fabric this stitch creates rolls horribly.  I blocked the dickens out of the scarf, but it still wants to roll in on itself when handled and not sitting still for photos.  Don't know if a lap full of this pattern would behave the same way, but I'm not eager to find out now.


The scarf before blocking, but it rolls up after blocking, too.

Anyway, here's to the first scant quarter mile in the half marathon.  Onward!

Deep Stash Yadda Yadda

So, the DS marathon isn't going anywhere, as is evidenced by the scads of blog entries I haven't posted about it.  I also haven't been keeping track of the yardage faithfully (and there is a little some to keep track of), so the idea of going through the backlog to count it all is just a bad one.  It's not gonna happen.

I maintain that the marathon is a good idea, I've just been going about it too casually.  A marathon is a race, after all, and I haven't been acting even like a tortoise in a race.  It's time to introduce the game into this game and set some real goals and real consequences.

[Insert ominous music here.]

And knock down the yardage miles a bit to, say, a half marathon.

Beginning July 1, I'm running my first ever Deep Stash Half Marathon.  I have until the end of the year to work through 23,072.5 yards of deep stash yarn (13.1 miles) or else I must sell/give away/toss the difference of what I don't use in projects.  Either way, I will be rid of just over 23K yards of yarn.  Gone.  Outta here.  Boom.  The sad consequence will be that some of it I won't get to use myself; it'll just be yarn echoes in the corners of my mind.

[Insert Debbie Downer sound effect]

And there are rules!  As follows:

Deep Stash is yarn that has spent five years or more in the stash (added in 2011 or earlier).

Only yarn taken from Deep Stash counts toward the DSHM2016 goal total, not from more recent stash.

Yarns can be held in multiple strands while working them into a project, and the individual yardage of each strand will count toward the goal total.  Because yardage that is gone, is GONE.

All projects finished by December 31, 2016 (using DS) will count.  They do not have to be started after July 1, 2016.

The goal total that isn't met by completed projects will be met as well by destashing methods (sell, give, toss) from Deep Stash.

Deep Stash destashing may occur at any time during the half marathon, not just as its end, and count toward the goal total.

So, how much do I have to work into projects to avoid the dreaded DESTASH decisions?

23,072.5 yards = 3,845 yards/month = 961 yards/week = 192 yards/day (for a five-day week).

Right.  Knitting almost 200 yards a day isn't setting myself up for failure.  Nope.

Yeah, I know it is, but the challenge of the race here is the difficulty.  I'm simply trying to work as much yardage through my fingers before I have to destash the rest, unused.

I intend to report yardage totals as I complete each project.  So, the blog entries may come sporadically, but I hope there will be several between now and the end of the year.

Now, if anyone wants to join me, great.  But, this isn't one of those decreasing-stash-alongs where there will be prizes.  Therefore, there will be no rule nannies to keep anyone in line.  If you want to use my rules for your race, fine.  If you want to expand the rules to your entire stash, great!  It's just that, I know my deep stash alone is still at least 138K yards (78 miles), so I've got a few half to full marathons in front of me before I've whittled it down to a more comfortable level.

So, okay then.  Get ready, get set...

Green Deep Stash

Deep Stash Departure Yardage
Since last tally:	2,756	1.57 miles
Current Total:	3,182	1.81 miles

It started with yoga socks.

Actually, it started with decrepitude in my knees, officially diagnosed as oseoarthritis.  To strengthen the joints, I took up yoga this summer, and THAT prompted me to knit yoga socks.  For which, I dove into the deep stash and whipped up this unispiring yet serviceable pair.

YOGA SOCKS

Yarn:  Unlabeled green acrylic
Yards:  103.2



Tubes with holes for ankles, toes, and heels.  So, stirrup pants without the pants part.  Remember stirrup pants, Gen Xers?  A '90s nod to a more equestrian era, no doubt.

I made a few modifications from Diana McKay's Mindful Yoga Socks instructions (free, through Ravelry.com), such as working from the toe up, keeping an inch of the ribbing all the way around the toes but working stockinette stitch for the bottom of the foot.  I cast on with the stretchy Old Norwegian Cast On and bound off with my favorite Miraculous Elastic method.

Weeks passed, and I knit on various and sundry things I'll write about at a later date.  My blog remained silent because I had nothing cohesive to add to it.

And then the temperatures began to fall, finally.  In mid-October, for crying out loud.  So, I pulled out the fat needles and bulky yarns which also happened to be green.  (A feeble common denominator, thematically, for a blog post, but my life is what it is.)


I purchased both of the following yarns at the same time with the intention of creating a matchy-matchy winter wear set.  And so I have.

OWL MITTS

Yarn:  Mirasol Sulka in Pear
Yards:  72.6



My grandma Mc was an owl fan, and I thought of her while I made these Owl Study Gloves, pattern by Meghan Bosanko.  Of course, I changed them a bit since I can't leave well enough alone.  I added more stitches to the cast on since my wrists are of the stocky variety, and I repeated the ribbing at the fingers.  Again, I used the cast on and bind off I mentioned earlier, except for the thumb which was the standard-issue bind off.

The buttons came from the collection handed down to me from my mom.  I believe they're mother-of-pearl, the tiny kind that could once be found on the cuffs of ladies' dresses.  So, my owls have beady, untrustworthy little eyes.  They don't need to see anything, anyway.

MOURA HEADBAND

Yarn: same as above
Yards:  37.4

The rest of the Sulka I put into the Moura Headband, pattern by Clara Beauty.



I followed the example of a fellow knitter on Ravelry and tapered the beginning and ending of the headband.  I had enough yarn to work only six pattern repeats, but I had enough left over to extend the tapered ending by three or four rows of seed stitching.  I blocked it to about 23 inches before I seams the ends together.



I think that's the first yarn I have completely eliminated from stash.

ARCTIC VERT COWL

Yarn:  Cascade Magnum
Yards:  almost 212.8

Finally, I had a super chunky yarn that looks like pencil roving, so I put it into this cowl of fat, undulating cables designed by Patrizia Momigliano.  It's called Arctic Blanc on Ravelry.



The husband told me I looked like a shady Star Wars character when I tried it on.  Fine.  A shady, WARM Star Wars character, thankyouverymuch.

I didn't modify the pattern in any way except for all the mistakes I made.  I've never cabled on the edges of a project before, and twice I held the cable needle to the back instead of the front like I was supposed to.  Also, my grafting stitches are loosey-goosey because I held the parallel needles too far apart.



For every mistake, I just was too unmotivated to fix it.  If they can't be discerned by someone on the back of a galloping horse (equestrian nod, again), and I can tolerate them, then they get to settle in.  There.  Proof of tolerance on my part.  Don't I feel morally wholesome now.

A grand total of 426 yards have taken their leave of Deep Stash with all this.  A bit shy of a quarter of a mile.  Not bad.

How I taught my dragon to count

Deep Stash Departure Yardage
Since last tally:	2,379	1.35 miles
Total:	2,756	1.57 miles

I have a competitive smudge.  Not a streak.  No, it's just a smudge, like a little war paint under the eyes.  (Though, I believe the modern stuff is called concealer, and I rarely do makeup, but of course here I'm speaking figuratively.)  Because I constitutionally despise confrontation, and see most competitions as glorified strife, I am selective with the ones I participate in.  A win isn't just a win but a means to an end.  I'll fight a war to gain a better peace.



Now, in whittling down this stash of mine, the greater peace is gaining greater space in my house as well as reducing the clutter in my mind.  To that end, then, I'm participating in a couple of competitions that spur me on to knit and crochet and knit some more, and to shop my stash to get it all done.

For a few years now, I've played along with the creative--genius, really--organizers of the Harry Potter Knit and Crochet House Cup on Ravelry.  Every three months (with a month's break between "terms"), a clever set of volunteers head up a fiber lover's Hogwarts, complete with Houses, classes, quidditch matches, and advanced studies like OWLs and NEWTs.  The stories these folks concoct to inspire the participants are worth more than the price of admission (FREE).  I've already plowed through thousands of yards while playing this game.

Then recently, while listening to a few knitting podcasts, which I do sporadically, I found out about Stash Dash, another stash-shrinking competition started by The Knit Girllls.  It's running between May 22 to August 14 this year.  This, like its name states, is a decent, flat-out run I can do inside my marathon, so I've jumped into it.

Both the HPKCHP and Stash Dash have a similar rule about counting yardage/meterage when more than one strand of yarn is held together while knitting or crocheting.  All strands are held as one, the logic goes, so the one length they lend themselves to is what is counted, not the lengths of the individual strands.  I can understand this, well, line of thought (pun not intended, but I didn't edited it out).  I don't entirely agree with it, but these are their games, so their rules.

My marathon, however, does not take that route.  Because, and follow me here, ALL THE LENGTHS that leave my stash are no longer in my stash.  What yardage was there before I finished a project and is not there afterwards, I count.  Whether I hold a yarn single, double, triple, or by a half dozen to arm knit, each yarn's length has been removed from the stash.  It gets counted.  Case in point, the shawl that has taken me over the mile and a half mark just this week:



My version of Melanie Berg's Drachenfels Shawl (Dragon Rock, in English) was knit with lace weight yarn, all from stash.  Two of the three colors came from Deep Stash.  In order to thicken the yarns and meet the gauge for the sport weight yarn the pattern calls for, I held each color threefold by working it into a Navajo ply.

So, a shawl that would have taken about 1,150 yards in sport weight, took three times as much in the lace weight.  When I submit this project to both the HPCKHC and Stash Dash, I'll say it took a Concurrent Length of 1,150 yards/1,052 meters.  It's Stash Departure Length, however, is 3,451 yards; it's Deep Stash Departure length (for the two yarns that come from Deep Stash) is 2,379 yards.

I count it the longer way because that is how many yards are not in my stash anymore.  The greater goal of this marathon, after all, is stash reduction.  As of today, I have a grand total of a mile and a half missing from my Deep Stash.  And I don't miss it, and that is the point.  That is the win I'm striving for.

Tunisian Pax Scarf

I've made a rip-roaring start to this Deep Stash Marathon thing.  It's been fourteen weeks since my last post, the one announcing my marathon aspirations, and I have used up not quite a quarter of a mile of yarn.

Yep.  A .21 mile stretch or 377 yards.  Just call me The Flash.

Yet the project which used such a staggering amount didn't disappoint me, in the end.  Along the way, I met with a setback when I ran out of the deep stash yarn I'd begun with.  The completed Pax Scarf projects in Ravelry mostly indicated I'd have enough yarn in one Ella Rae Lace Merino hank to finish it.  Uh, no.



What you're looking at in the photo is the main body of the scarf completed and most of the lace border at the point where I discovered I had about a foot of yarn left in my project bag.  And this scarf was a class I was taking.  Days of work went into the border, and only a few days remained until the next class session for which I was supposed to have the border done.

You know, eventually after shock comes the anger stage, yet I had to speed up the process and skip right to the grumbling since I had so little time to figure out what I was going to do.

I knew I would have to rip out the border, no matter what.  So, I took a breath and did that deed.  Then I went searching for replacement yarn.  Naturally, I didn't have the right color in the right weight already in my stash.  When I scoured the fingering weight section at my local yarn shop, however, I had another moment of shock.  In a good way this time.  Because there, with a multitude of hanks in a glass cubbie, sat a dead ringer for the blue shade that's in the Elle Rae.  I sang hallelujah (yeah, you know, I probably did).



It is Araucania Nuble. I snagged a hank of it and started off again.  Once the border was done, I edged the scarf in the Ella Rae, blocked it, and voila!



I think it looks better with the blue Araucania as the lace border than it did with the Ella Rae as the whole thing.

Oh, and I'd like to place a wee review in here about the new blocking wires by Lazadas I used on this project.  They are F l E x I b L e--twisty, curvy, bendy, and they didn't get stuck in those shapes once I was done with them.  The Pax Scarf is actually the second project I blocked with them, and I am a fan.





I bought the set of three 70"-long and four 35"-long wires, the "Mixed Set."  The set comes with a packet of 30 T-pins.  Oh, and I'm not getting a single perk from plugging these wires, just so you know.  I bought the set outright on Amazon.

I've already started the next project with deep stash yarn.  Hopefully, this one will dispense with way more yardage.  In the meantime, an artsy, parting photograph...

Deep Stash Marathons

We're approaching the third week of the new year, so my resolution is right on time. And with a new year comes a new Deep Stash challenge.  Why?  Because that yarn isn't going away by itself.  Another Deep Stash 9 challenge won't cut it, however.  DS9 eliminated a mere 5,178 yards out of the more than 33K of what I considered deep stash last year (yarn acquired during 2008 and earlier).  In addtion to what was left over from DS9, I am increasing Deep Stash to include 2009 and 2010 yarn.  My philosophy is that any yarn five years or older in my stash is mature enough to be out on its own in the world, being worn or admired or clogging up someone else's stash.  With the inclusion of those years, however, the total yardage of my Deep Stash has swollen into something horrendously huge.

That is, marathon huge.

Okay. two marathons huge.

Yes, Deep Stash has enough yardage now to cover the length of two marathons--92,290 yards.  Apparently, I went bat guano crazy in 2009 and 2010 and thought I had to insulate my entire house with nothing but yarn, thereby almost tripling my yarn stash at the time.  (I have not literally stuffed the walls with yarn, of course.  It's harder to get to that way.)

So, here's the plan:  I am focusing my efforts on Deep Stash, and I am going to see how long it takes me to work my way through 46,145 yards of yarn, one marathon's worth.  I know, I know.  I have at least two marathon's worth.  For that second amount, then, I'm going to see whether I can give away, sell, and/or toss an additional 46,145 yards.

Gah!  The very idea sends my electrolytes plummeting!

I might not be able to do the concurrent marathon; I might be too yarn flabby or hooked on it or whichever pathology the DSM-V might pin on me.  But I think I must try.  Both challenges will make my basement craft grotto look so much bigger.

A few guidelines and allowances:

The focus is on Deep Stash, but I may work with newer yarn from time to time, either from newer stash or brand, spanking-new yarn.  I would like to keep DS work to three out of four projects, though.

I may buy new yarn without a project in mind.  However, I want to finish the race(s) with more yards eliminated from the stash than what I take in.  My ultimate goal from June 2013 hasn't changed; I want to fit all my stash in my dad's old bureau.

There you have it.  This isn't a resolution that can be contained to 2015.  More than likely it will extend into the next three or four years.  After doing a lot of math for this post, I discovered the most I've knit in one year is 12,072 yards.  Now that I'm not employed at a yarn store, I can knit my own yarn more often, yet I'm not as motivated to finish projects quickly by shop sample deadlines.  I'll have to figure out how to "pace myself," I guess.  I will endeavor to keep the blog up to date with my progress...for myself and for the sake of my throngs of readers.

Deep Stash 9, the initial frontier

I've left a lot of the last several months unrecorded on this blog. When I last waxed on and on, I was giving Monday The Finger, right? It turns out that not only has my defiance helped me throw off the Monday Blahs, but so has just owning up to the blahs out loud, in print. Digital print, anyway.

I was kind of surprised by that. It's not that I was trying to keep my intermittent depression a secret and that tossing it into the blogosphere became a huge relief from a hoarded burden. I hadn't been secretive, but the relief came anyway.  After I set it all down into (moderately) ordered thoughts for more witnesses than just my journal pages to stew over, I somehow created distance--an interruption to some self-defeating cycle. I have had very few very bad Mondays since.

One of the things I've left unrecorded here is that I have finally “Deep Stashed” nine projects. I'm bummed I didn't share the process here. I said I would try, but nope. Didn't happen. I actually made eleven projects, but two different yarns sourced two projects each. So, in order of completion:

(Each project title is a link to its respective Ravelry page.)

Asymetrical Cables Socks, blogged about here. (281yards of yarn used.)




Hourglass Throw, also blogged at the aforementioned link. (1512 yards used.)




Magical Mystery Headband, an attempt to mimic a stitch pattern on a small scale. (A meager 88 yards used.)




Juno Regina Stole, blogged here. (818 yards)




Buckland Sweater, blogged here. I dipped into that Donegal Tweed yarn again to test knit a currently unpublished cowl pattern. I wish I could show you a picture, but it'll have to wait until the designer releases the pattern. (1114 yards used, in total)




Little Minx socks. For a busy yarn, I made the counter-intuitive match to a busy pattern. The pattern is regular, however, so it doesn't get lost in the manic color changes and actually tames the colorway a little, in my opinion. Which was the one that counted, since I was knitting it. (286 yards)




From a skein of thermonuclear green Caron Simply Soft that WILL NOT DIE, I made two projects: Nermal the Roly Poly Kitty and a set of IV Site Wrist Covers for the pediatric ward at a local hospital. These two projects were also used in my local yarn shop's BINGO game, which is still going on. Nermal covered the Toy Square, and the fingerless mitts covered the Charity square. I'll have to blog more about the Bingo game later. (79 yards altogether)




Meadowsweet Cardigan, suitable to cover the Something for Baby square in Bingo. (234 yards used.)




Birds of a Feather shawlette. Is it a skinny shawl? A fat-ended scarf? Yes! It's also the first mystery knitalong I've ever done, all to check off another Bingo square. (766 yards of two different yarns)




That's the first nine projects. Did the nearly 5200 yards of yarn I plowed through knock a dent in my oldest stash, the yarn I bought in a new knitter frenzy back in 2007/08? Um, no. Not even. I did the math. I have almost nineteen MILES of yarn left. (I converted the total into miles because the yardage number is just too ridiculous to type. You go convert it back if you really want to know.) So, I'm considering my options. I might give away some of the yarn, sell it, or (more likely) keep knitting it. I'll let know.

Deep Stash, Third Project

After two months, it's done.  The Juno Regina Stole.



The pattern, at Knitty.com, is by Miriam L. Felton.  The yarn is Alpaca Cloud laceweight by Knit Picks.  I have a nit to pick with that yarn, by the way, but later.



For now, I know I mentioned I might post an in-progress view of the stole.  Instead, I just kept knitting on it; I was determined to finish it by the end of July.  As recompense, I do have a few shots of the wrap while it was blocking.  I tried a couple of new-to-me techniques of which I wanted to keep a record.



Since I don't have a Hogwarts Great Hall table in my dining room, and because I knew this thing would block to over seventy inches (finaly tally:  94"), I folded it in half to block it.  In the picture below, you might think you're seeing double, but it's just the lower level of knitting that's a tad offset.



Also, while I love love LOVE blocking wires, they do not come in half sizes.  I needed short wires to set the points of the stole.  (Letting long wires do the job, all the while sticking out over the edge of the table, is an open invitation for a cat to get his eye poked out from PLAY.  MUST PLAY!  ATTACK the sticky-outy things!!!)

Of course, I could cut one of the wires I already have, but that kind of rashness I save for breaking alpaca laceweight yarn three times when its center-pull ball keeps throwing up knots and snarls and general mayhem at all hours of the day and night.

Not that I'm never going to use this yarn again.  I could.  I've learned its limits now and respect them.  High-maintanence, prima donna, breath-of-god soft stuff that it is.

Anyway.  I used a pair of metal knitting needles to set the stole's points.



And everything turned out all right.



The stole is about fourteen inches wide.



And I'll probably wear it more like this, as a loose scarf, than around my shoulders as a stole.



I'm working on projects right now that either don't involve stash or are using yarn that hasn't spent much time with its elderly counterparts.  But more Deep Stash work is in the queue!  In the form of socks, probably, because this wet, mild summer will eventually dip into even cooler temperatures.



Soggy tomatoes, anyone?

Deep Stash 9

I have a hugantic yarn stash.  I began collecting yarn back when I knit only on looms, seven and a half years ago, but the majority of the hoard came into being after I switched to knitting needles a short time later.  The needles made me think I could knit faster, I guess, but I couldn't keep up.  The fiber just appeared in my house--skein after bagload--as if someone had fed the first few of them after midnight.

In the early days, when the stash filled a mere bin or two, I logged it all into Ravelry.  

You're looking at Deep Stash.

It wasn't an overwhelming task, really, and I loved seeing my yarn displayed on one webpage.  Since then, I have continued to keep track of it via Ravelry.  I would buy a few skeins, use one immediately, but mostly tuck the rest of it away until a project worthy of the precious yarnie-warnie came my way.  And so my Ravelry stash page grew.

Not even half of it.

Also, my dad's old wardrobe is now involved for storage, as well as four sets of plastic, stackable chests of drawers.  And there is overflow.  A knitter doesn't divulge exact, total yardage in mixed company (meaning, non-yarn obsessives connoisseurs), but the numbers on Ravelry tell me I could unreel a continuous line of string from my house to Tulsa, no problem.  Whenever I was in the same room as The Stash, I felt confronted by it.  It was a wall of yarn, skeins inhumanely caged because so much potential was just sitting there.  If the yarn could talk, it would've been muttering resentfully.  

Let me tell you, confrontational yarn loses a lot of its preciousness in a big hurry.  

So in January, I began diving into my stash more often for projects.  Now, the fact that I started doing this after New Year's Day is more or less coincidence.  I didn't act from a resolution, in other words, because resolutions made in January are like snowflakes made in May--they're doomed to die as soon as they hit ground.  (And around here this year, we knew about Maytime snowflakes.)  No, I was simply appalled at the stash-strocity around that time of year when winter was at its deepest and darkest.  I became determined to whittle it down, so I reacted without much forethought.  Thus was born Deep Stash 9.

Projects made from my oldest yarn acquisitions (the "Deep Stash") have been and will continue to be my main focus this year.  I've already completed two projects which I've pictured below, and I'm working on the third.  I've knit other projects in between them--those made from more recent additions to my stash and those made with brand new yarns for the local yarn shop where I work.  Primarily, though, I am focusing on the stash yarns with the oldest vintage.

How old is that? Also, have I made any other guidelines for myself?  Here are the bullet point specs:

• Yarns acquired during 2008 or earlier are eligible for The Nine*.
• Most of the yardage of a particular yarn must be used in the project, so leftovers are allowed.
• I can knit or crochet with other yarn, too, especially other yarn from my stash.  My goal is to reduce the general size of the stash, after all.

That's pretty much it.  I'm not even giving myself a time limit, like I Must Knit All Old Yarn By 2014.  Since I would like to reduce the size of my entire stash so that it will all fit into my dad's wardrobe, I'm just going to work stitch by stitch, yard by yard, until enough of it is gone.  Until I'm most of the way back home from Tulsa, that is.  

With all of that explained, the first project of Deep Stash 9 was a pair of socks knit with a superwash merino wool dyed as "Coffee Bean" by Beyond Basic Knits.  

Like most of the other yarns in The Nine, I bought this one in 2008.  The dyer is no longer selling yarn on etsy.com, apparently; I can find no trace of her there.  

The pattern is Asymmetrical Cables by Cookie A, from the book Sock Knitting Master Class by Ann Budd.

The second project is a blanket, Hourglass Throw, by Anne Hanson.  

I bought the yarn as mill ends from another now-defunct online seller Angelicrafts.  It was a great deal, even though Caron Simply Soft is already inexpensive, but I'd never seen this heathered plum in stores.  I had intended to knit THOMY a sweater with it since purple is his favorite color, but I made the blanket instead to give to his stepmom who recently underwent chemotherapy.  I wanted her to have it as her chemo blanket, but I sorely underestimated the time it took to knit.  In the end, she got the blanket for Mother's Day.  

I'll post the other Nine individually, and probably while they're in progress.  And I do my utmost to keep the other posts from being this freakishly long.

*Why NINE?  If you're a Trekkie of any depth, you don't really have to ask that question.  And, yes, I accidentally typed "Space" at least once.  To directly answer a question THOMY posed to me:  No, there will be no Ferengi sweaters included.  Not even ear muffs.

Hopped Up

This weekend, I toured the Central Kansas Yarn Shop Hop: Nine yarn shops from Abilene to Winfield in three days...three hundred fifty-five miles, seven hours and three minutes of just drive time, according to Google Maps.

Of course, I had to take time to browse, shop, and eat. I brought my camera with me but never dragged it out of the bag, I was so gung-ho about my roap trip. So I've missed showing you all the ironwork for sale at an antique store, the decadent slice of chocolate mousse cake at Abilene's Kirby House (the wedge could've propped open a door), and the weird little scooter/pedal bike I saw weaving through traffic in Hutchinson.

The post is not without pictures, however. At each shop, a container of mini yarn balls--40 yards per ball--awaited shop hoppers. We were allowed to choose one at each shop, thus collecting enough to knit a Scrappy Lengthwise Scarf. In the last year or so, cowls have taken the place of scarves in my winter closet. So, with my yarn, I'll make a cowl in the scarf pattern's linen stitch. That's the plan, anyway, whenever I get around to it.

But now, a pretty little still life.



And another of my larger yarn haul.



Most of the shops also gave goody bags with truly goody stuff in them.



The purple box contains smaller compartments with lids to hold stitchmarkers, wee tiny scissors, used gum...etc.

At the shop in Winfield, I snagged a small, felted coin purse on sale and a test bottle of starch-substitute pressing aid.



And that was my weekend! I really wanted to find a video of someone riding one of those electric bike scooters as they were pedalling it, but all I could find was one like this. Yeah, it's a commercial, but see the pedals? How cool is that.