Lightening the load

I began this blog as a digital version of show-n-tell, in the spirit of those structured fun times during elementary school when all the classroom kids gathered together and shared something cool, weird, or otherwise meaningful to the one standing in front of the others.  Everyone took their turn.  On a blog, it's always the blogger's turn; it's just that the cool, weird, or special things being shared wait around on the blog until someone discovers them.

On Scrapdash, I lumped all the parts of my life I wanted to share because it was a convenient place.  I'm most interested in cooking and a couple forms of crafts (sewing and knitting), but one or two, more in-depth monologs have found themselves here as well.  The last few years have been about thinning down The Stuff.  Yarn, mostly, and that effort will continue because there are miles to go yet.  Yeah.  Literally, I guess, measured in marathons.

Along the way, my interests divided from the one path into two by, oddly enough, my sewing and knitting combining into the creation of project bags I have sold to local knitters and crocheters for about five years now. Because I sold them locally and not also online, I never got around to talking about them here on the blog.  While the paths had divided into personal and professional, they ran parallel and close together.

Now, however, I'm working my way toward selling my wares on the interwebs.  It's a slowish process for me because I do everything like I'm wearing velcro shoes on AstroTurf, but it's forward motion nonetheless.  As a result, I am moving my future knitting-related and probably sewing/quilting-related chitchat onto my business' blog Jennamay made.  For anything else I might have to say, I will keep it under the Scrapdash header, but I'm posting all that wisdom and know-how to a new Scrapdash address.  Both blogs are on Wordpress, a place I'm hoping will help me streamline how I have to say what I say.

I have no plans to take down the content here on the original Scrapdash blog.  Only the new stuff will appear at the new places.  On Jennamay made, I'm revealing the yarn I'm giving up to make up for the Deep Stash Half Marathon's yardage deficit.  I'm also starting the new Stash Marathon there.  Disasters in the kitchen that manage to be tasty anyhow will show up in the new Scrapdash site.  I may post more reflective stuff there, too, including book reviews (because I can't get away from grade school exercises, apparently).

I'm also not migrating the followers list and email notifications list from here.  I don't know if that's possible, anyway, so this is an opportunity for current followers to lighten their loads if they decide not to opt-in to notifications on the new sites.  You're welcome.  Whether or not you follow me to the new blogs, thank you for being curious about my shenanigans this far.  In all the antics on the internet, I'm grateful you have stopped by to turn an eye toward mine.

Hip to be Squares

So scrap yarn blankets have been all the rage for a few news cycles now, but I had started one years before I knew to be cool.  It's made of tessellating fish, and this wee, single fishy is the only one I got done during the Deep Stash Half Marathon.



It's made of the last tiny bit of the heathered, dark red Berocco Comfort from which I made the NICU baby hats in the last post.

Sock yarn scrap blankets seem to be the most popular weight of cuddle-wear just now.  I went ahead and started a blanket in this yarn weight, too, but instead of going for the mitered square pattern that spread faster than a stadium wave, I decided to weave my blanket squares into being.





Each square is four-by-four inches and was woven double-stranded on a Zoom Loom, a modern version of a pin loom, made by Schacht Spindle Company.  Both sets of these squares are made from the leftovers of the socks I mentioned in the last post.  It takes about 15 grams of fingering weight yarn to make four squares, and each set of four will be coupled in my blanket with another set of four as well as a single square in a different color to go in the middle of nine-patch blocks.  I started out as a quilter, after all, and a nine-patch block blanket is a pretty basic, beautiful layout.

Now, the final object that counts toward my DS Half Marathon yardage is a square that is not for a scrap blanket.  In fact, I think the term "square" is too demeaning.  It is a block, dear ones.  A Block, and not one meant for a mere blanket but for an afghan.  That is, the Great American Aran Afghan.  (And lest you think I'm getting all pompous up in here, I usually refer to this long-term project by its street name GAAA.)



I started my GAAA back in 2013 with Berocco Comfort yarn I bought in 2009.  I add to my collection of blocks slowly.  This one, designed by Ginger Smith, is the sixth of how many I know not will be needed.  I simply cast on one when I get the yen.

Now, yardage of all these individual blanket/afghan parts count toward the yardage total despite the fact the blankets/afghan aren't done because once the yardage is in that fish, square, or block, it is not coming back into the stash.  It's out.  Forever.  Even if the larger project is never completed, that yardage has been cast out of the nest to make a life for itself in the cold, hard world.

So, drumroll, please...in your imagination...

Yardage for this post:
Fish:  14.7
Zoom Loom squares:  132.6
GAAA block:  142.8

Deep Stash Half Marathon 2016 update:

Total yardage from this post:  290.1
DSHM current yardage total:  13,470.1 (7.7 miles, rounded up)
DSHM yardage remaining:  9,602.4  (5.5 miles, rounded up)

So!  I did NOT finish my Half Marathon challenge by the end of 2016.  Surprise, surprise.  I did at least manage to purge a little more than a quarter marathon.  This means I will need to surgically remove almost ten thousand yards of yarn from the Deep Stash, in order to honor the terms of the challenge to myself.  This I will do.  I will!  In an upcoming post.  Stay tuned for that and for an announcement of my plans for 2017.