Wednesday, January 26, 2011

An impossible task and a photo!

I have been going through all the patterns I have collected over the years and am pitching the ones I am no longer interested in.  If you know me, that doesn't amount to many hitting the recycle bin.  I have noted on the top of the pattern how many yards it calls for and what size needle/hook.  I then sorted them by number of yards  (>100, 100, 200,...1200, 1300, etc.).  I will further organize them by type within their yardage group.  Are you still with me? 
Believe it or not, I am now winding my myriad hanks of yarn into balls, putting them on the McMorran yarn balance, noting the yards/pound and then I will weigh each ball and get the number of yards I actually have.
The concept is to be able to match the patterns with yarn I actually own! I am going through all this complexity to do something simple and obvious. The last few years of work were punctuated by many trips to the local (and online) yarn stores to buy soul enhancing loveliness to offset the morale sucking times at work.  This created an overabundance of various balls of this and that and now I have the desire to use them for good.
When I am feeling particularly solid within myself, I may take a photo of my knitting room and let you see what I am talking about.  It is a large-huge amount.  I also have a weaving room with its share of inventory.  Then there is the spinning fiber.  Oy vey!  I need to live and long time. At least my children both knit and can appreciate the inheritance possibilities.

Today I had help figuring out how to add a picture.  This is the entrelac I mentioned the other day.  I thought I was picking up speed, but it turned out that I was making each row a bit smaller by eliminating one edge triangle.  I had to rip it back -- twice!  Not all the way, but about 5 levels of squares.  I have now figured it out and have knitted it enough to have used up all the yarn I had ripped out.  This is a huge accomplishment for me.  I have 22 rows of entrelac in this picture. I now have 31 rows finished.  The ball of yarn is all the rest of the dye samples tied together and wound.  I was thinking that there wasn't much yardage when it was in individual samples, but now that it is wound together I think I'm in good shape and it will make a long scarf.

4 comments:

  1. It appears to be a scarf in training - very pretty colors!

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  2. while discussing fiber stashes with hubby he said knitters shouldn't be able to die till they used up all their stash!!!

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  3. great work and colors. but i came over to tell you that sara said you should post more often;-)

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  4. Remember how you used to tell Sara she should post more often? Well, back atcha - so sayeth Sara.

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