Tag Archive | destash

Stuck on sleeve island

I really need to clear out some WIPs. My knitting is not inspiring me lately but I can’t bring myself to cast on anything new right now. It’s dumb, because I only have four WIPs on the needles, but my brain won’t let me accept more. Really, I’m a little blocked with my knitting. I recently had a big load of dirty handknit socks, so I decided to be bold and try to machine wash and dry them, partly to save time and effort and partly to get rid of most of the dog hair stuck to them. And for the most part, they’re fine, or so I thought. A couple of pairs might have felted a tiny bit, and a few looked a bit smaller, but hey, they’ll stretch. Then I found a solitary sock that didn’t make it into the dryer.

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That is…not ideal. Maybe they shrank more than I realized? I guess I’ll find out when I wear them. I think I’m just feeling a little defeated with my knitting. I love knitting socks, but they’re high-maintenance, they don’t stay snug, the heels felt, and they shrink. I don’t wear hats, you can only have so many fingerless gloves or shawls or scarves, I have yarn in my stash I won’t wear now that I have purple hair (I refuse to wear red and purple together) and what’s the point even of having so much yarn and making things?

Oof. That’s not a pretty thought. I mean, maybe my head wasn’t in a great place yesterday anyway, but I had to fight this because in my heart I know there is value in making pretty things, so I picked up my sweater. I love to wear my handknit sweaters, and since I wear a layer underneath, they don’t need to be washed with each wear like socks. Sweaters are useful and practical as well as fun. So I knit a sleeve yesterday.

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This morning I picked up for the second sleeve and I’ll work on that while watching movies I love, and with any luck, I’ll feel better about my knitting by the end of the day.

And I’m not going KonMari my whole stash, but if you’re interested in a gorgeous skein of Zen Yarn Garden Serenity Silk Single for $30 including US shipping, let me know. I would much rather have a skein of this yarn in a color I’d love to wear all the time.

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Whoa! Destash!

May27

I got a whim today, a whim to go through my yarn and get rid of what doesn’t bring me joy. I’ve been pondering it for a while, but kept telling myself it wasn’t hurting anything to keep it all, and I had the space, so why not keep it just in case I ever needed it?

Well, I didn’t really have a good answer but I decided I needed to go through it all anyway. This is close to where I started. (This is an older photo. I’d added more yarn between this photo and today. So imagine this plus some.)

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I pulled out a LOT of acrylic, mostly stuff I’d bought back when I was making things to sell. Also, I tend to prefer natural fibers to acrylic now, so I only kept my very favorite acrylic blends. I pulled out a lot of cotton and blends. Even now in the heat, I don’t find myself wanting to work with the mercerized cotton. I don’t tend to wear the things I have made with it. I only kept kitchen cotton in the colors that are actually in my kitchen, and the cotton blends that are soft and drapey.

Then I moved into the good yarn, the wool and blends. If it was itchy, I pulled it out. A few yarns I pulled are gorgeous; I still loved the look of it. But I’d used some of it and didn’t like knitting with it or wearing it, so there was no point keeping it. If it was a color I would never use, or a weight I’d never use (like one skein of sport weight?), I pulled it. I was ruthless but it wasn’t painful at all. This was what I had in the end:

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That’s a LOT of yarn. I mean, it’s kind of ridiculous when you see it all spread out like that! I’ll bag it up and see if I can sell it locally for a bit of money, and in the meantime, I’ll enjoy my newly organized stash. It’s gorgeous!

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Even looking at the shelves makes me happy! This is all yarn that I love, that I can see myself using. I even found a skein of Madtosh that I forgot I had! And that right there is a good reason to get rid of stuff I was keeping just for the heck of it: I can see what I have more easily, I can see the yarn I chose with intent, and I know that I could pick anything from my stash and be happy to knit with it.

p.s. yes I know it’s still a crazy big stash! I’m okay with that!

A Story of Yarn

Dec29

Free yarn. What knitter would turn down free yarn? Not this one! So when one of my SILs said she’d gotten some yarn from a client and it was mine if I wanted it, I said sure! To be honest, I was expecting chain-store acrylic. Then she said the woman had told her it was “good yarn, not the cheap stuff” and my hopes went up a bit. A quick glance in the bag revealed it was indeed “better” yarn — I saw one label for Rowan wool and thought I might find some goodies.

That night I dumped out the bag, and as I started picking up the balls, I made a disappointing discovery: the yarn had been stored around a smoker. The smell wasn’t super strong, not overpowering, but it was there. I knew I could wash finished pieces but I was afraid the smell would bother me as I knit.

I did some googling and asking around, and the consensus was that washing the yarn was my only hope, and even that might not work. Knowing that, I performed triage on the yarn. I set aside to donate the colors I didn’t like, the unlabeled skeins I thought were acrylic, the ones that felt too scratchy for me. That left me with seven balls of wool and cotton. I filled up a tub with water and Eucalan and let them soak for several hours, then squished them out and set them on a towel to dry.

Well, that took forever, as you can imagine. I decided they’d dry out faster and air out better if I could put them in loose hanks. So I spent some time with my swift and ended up with neat, tidy, damp hanks hanging in my craft room.

Tonight they were dry so back on the swift they went to get wound into pretty cakes. As near as I can tell, the smoke smell is gone. (As is most of the cat hair.) What treasures did I keep? I hear you asking. Well, I got two skeins of what I believe is pima cotton (pink and purple), one skein of Rowan superwash wool in red, one skein of a luscious wool/silk/cashmere blend (Jo Sharp Silkroad Ultra, to be specific), two balls of Mochi Plus in the color Neptune (which I recognized because I have three balls already), and best of all, a skein of Cascade Baby Alpaca Chunky in red. They’re all definitely worth the work of washing and reskeining! And now I’m quite pleased with myself and my new stash.

What about you? Have you ever gotten awesome yarn for free? Or gone to great lengths to save good yarn?

Yarn De-Stash

Apr29

After my recent yarn purchases, I spent a bit of time sorting through my stash. It was getting rather over-crowded again and I needed to make some room. I pulled out a few yarns I decided I’d probably never use, and figured I’d post them here in case any of them called to my knit/crochet readers. I’ll attach a contact form at the end of this post, or you can email me at bonny(at)bonnyknits(dot)com. If you’re willing to pay the shipping, I’ll ship anywhere you want me to! Payment through PayPal.

Araucania Ruca Solid color 109. 100% sugar cane. 4 unused skeins. DK weight, 263 yards per skein. $25 for the lot, plus s&h. (Retails at $14/skein)

Classic Elite Yarns Imagine 53/47 cotton/rayon blend. DK weight, 93 yards each. There’s a lovely shimmer that was really hard to catch in the photos. $6 plus s&h.

KnitPicks Brava Worsted, color Caution. Was just too bright for what I wanted. 3 skeins, all unused. $5 plus s&h.

KnitPicks Wool of the Andes Superwash color Camel Heather. No idea why I bought this, since it’s not really my color. $2 plus s&h.

KnitPicks Wool of the Andes Bulky Superwash. Wound but unused. One dark, one light purple. Love the colors, they just weren’t as soft as I like. $5 plus s&h.

Wool Pak Yarns NZ 100% New Zealand wool. Label not marked with ply or shade. Label states 250 grams per skein, these three weigh in at 245 grams. I bought it like this, no idea why it was split into three. $5 plus s&h.

I also have a ton of cheaper acrylic to re-home, too much to list individually. If you like Red Heart Super Saver, Caron One Pound, Homespun, or things like that, give me a holler and I can give you an idea of what I’ve got!