Stash Busting!

I have never really been one to go on a "yarn diet." I find that for me there is simply no good reason to try to curb the influx of wool into my house. It's what I like to do and there's no way to overdose on yarn, die from yarn, hurt others with my obsession with yarn, or harm myself with yarn. I don't ever buy enough to put me into debt and I am very clever about finding room for more of it (goodbye trunk space!). So ultimately, I usually just buy as much as I can whenever I can and have often inwardly scoffed at other knitters' attempts to curb their purchasing habits.

But, alas, all good things must come to an end. I went through my stash and found out a few irritating truths:
1) There is a lot of yarn in my house
Now this shouldn't be an irritating truth because obviously, I like yarn! I like knitting and yarn is like my soul string. It's what all my good feelings are made of! But, unfortunately, if I continue to buy  yarn without using up some of the yarn I already have, I will inevitably run out of room for yarn. And with us moving soon to a smaller place I really don't have a lot of room for yarn. So, it's either use it up or donate or get rid of it and seriously I bought (most of) this yarn because I loved it and wanted to use it.
2) The amount of yarn that I DON'T want is incredibly small
There is one bag of things I COULD donate. And it's a very small bag.
3) A lot of this yarn I have toted around for YEARS
The oldest yarn is the yarn I'm the most sick of seeing and I think it should go first. And by go I mean be knitted up.
4) I have some really nice yarn!
I have anzula, malabrigo, koigu, beautiful hand-dyed skeins from local spinners...why am I not knitting this stuff up?! Why do I instead rush off the the store to get a sweater's quantity of some cheapo acrylic for the umpteenth time?
5) That bag of teeny tiny little scraps
What in the heck am I supposed to make out of them?! I've been researching scrap afghans but honestly I don't really like how they look. I don't want to do a cozy memories or a log cabin type one, I hate weaving in ends, I don't want to crochet one even though it would be quicker, I guess they are just doomed to sit there on time out and think about what they have done.

 

Anyway

I did work on a hat from all stash. Be proud.

(Yes unapolgetic snapchat filter photos. Why wear makeup when I can just use snapchat!?)
This is the siksak hat It is a free pattern on Ravelry and it was perfect for a little bit of stash busting. I used most of a ball of Patons Classic Wool for the beige color. (Leftover from my fair isle cardigan I made a few years ago) and everything else was scraps of patons as well, except for the orange which had no ballband and was I think Ella Rae from a Tuesday Morning sale. This hat is excessively long, proof again that I really should do gauge for hats, but I actually quite like how it looks. I will definitely end up making another one out of different colors eventually. And honestly the turn up brim makes it SOOO warm and cozy. If ever I knit hats for the homeless this is the pattern for it! The brim, by the way, was also the most boring and horrible part to work on. ah, life.


So then I worked a little bit on my Must Have Cardigan, and worked a little bit on a boring pair of socks in progress, both of which I don't have pictures of because they are boring. (The socks are all black, and a vanilla pattern. For the husband. I'll share on completion) Then I went back to my stash for another quick little stash buster.

My daughter was in want of a cardigan. And I had a random ball of I'm really not sure that I had purchased just for the express purpose of making her a sweater. Only, I knew it was enough to make a sweater for her THEN, when she was 100% still inside my body. Now she is over a year, and I worried the ball wouldn't be enough. Surprise: it wasn't.

So I got a little fancy with the collar, pulling another ball of stash out and working up a little short row collar. Which looked funky of course, so I added the pockets.

I almost frogged it before I got the pockets on, but once I did I realized it was turning into something quite unlike I had expected and I suddenly decided that it needed embroidery. (I never embroider so this was quite unusual.)

Ahhh the little blanket stitch. I stayed up well past midnight wanting to get this done for Finished Object Friday. (I did!)

And finally a little daisy on each pocket.

The sweater- a frankenstein modge-podge of stash yarn and hopes - actually amazingly FIT my daughter (after I reached the underarms and started running out of yarn, I abandoned the regular pattern of decreases and just did whatever I could to conserve yarn and keep some semblance of sweater-shape so I was shocked it worked out ok) and looks stinkin' cute on her.

She, of course, pulled it off in a fit of rage after about 3 hours.


At any rate, I'm pretty impressed with how much I've worked from stash so far. There is so much yarn in my stash I'm sure there is plenty to knit without getting bored! As of now, I'm working on (aside from ongoing cardigan and socks) a very old project: a crochet baby blanket I started for Penelope but which now has no intended recipient.

Oh and I started a knitting journal! This was right before I FOUND my old one from high school which is hilarious.

I can't wait to share that with you all. I'm planning on making a video.

Happy knitting!