I am not alone...

Flying Saucers have not landed in my back yard.  It's the de-stash thing.

I found a Ravelry group that is devoted to the knitting from one's own personal yarn shop, called Stash Knit Down [Rav link].  The point is to finish up (or frog) your Works in Progess; sell, give away or donate the yarn you'll never use; knit those projects that you really want to knit and already have the yarn.  From what I've read on the discussion boards, my stash isn't nearly as bad as other people's.  My essential thriftiness keeps me in line.  However I just did my taxes and all those 'but it's for the business' expenses are a bit over the top.  And as I am doing some work in my studio, I had to move all that yarn, so I know how much I really have.  It's not pretty.  Well, it's actually very pretty!

Last weekend I visited Friends and Fiberworks, a new yarn shop here in Asheville.  I wanted to scope it out - one of the owners asked me about teaching some classes.  While chatting, I complemented them on the selection of yarns and fibers (it's very tempting) but apologized that I was 'on a yarn diet.'   They totally got it - the partners are on yarn diets too! At least they are trying, but it's got to be hard surrounded by wonderful yarns, spinning and felting fibers all day.

One way to make it easier to knit down the stash is to make up kits.  Take the yarn and pattern and put it in a zip lock bag.  Place several of these bags on a handy shelf.  Need to knit - a project is there for you!  My personal variation is to make up several kits for my Windy City hat (shown here) and pack them in a tote with needles and stitchmarkers and take the tote to work.  That way I have lunch hour knitting right there.  I even bought a few extra needles so they will always be there when I need them.

So now I have a bit of support.  Don't buy yarn - knit what you already have.  No pictures yet, but remember the yarn from the harvested sweater?  I have already knit 5 or 6 hats that look darn good!  I am trying out designs and having a good time with very nice yarn.  Knitting down the stash can be very rewarding - and fun!

Finishing: A Good Feeling

Finishing - It's the new beginning!  Well, not really.  But it is a good feeling to take unfinished works-in-progress and get them done, pull them out and repurpose the yarn and otherwise get them out of the guiolt-filled 'gotta do this' column regardless of where they end up.  The blue socks that you see here are toe up socks that were nearly complete.  Now they are done, toes grafted, ends woven in, and ready to wear.  But since it's spring thy will go into the cedar chest until fall.

The brown socks were newly knitted.  I came across the sport-weight Socka Colori yarn while going through UFOs and they looked like a 'knock them out fast' project that was perfect for after the sweaters.  Again - they were fast.  I did them in just under a week in bits and pieces of lunch hours, TV watching, waiting for other people.

The other interesting knitting has been taking the un-sweater Rowan Chunky Tweed and knitting it into interesting hats.  Spring is kind of 'design time' for me.  Play around with yarns and ideas so that when it's time to go into production mode, I know where I am going.  Having fun with those!  Pics to come after I see what is worth sharing.

Some Yarns are Worth Keeping!

As I have been destashing and selling and giving away yarns, 'un-knitting' poor design choices, some yarns are worth keeping.  This Irish wool was given to me.  It is a bit elderly, but is 100% wool and has a kind of Irish heritage - just like me.  It had been knitted up and pulled out.  So I re-skeined it and washed the yarn. 

Guess what?  It's kind of nice!  Creamy, much softer.  Still a bit rustic.  Still with a knot or two.  But all in all, a yarn that deserves another chance.  Not sure what it will become, so the possibilities are open.  I've been thinking about working on my Fair Isle skills, so this could become part of that collection.  

How to Turn a Sweater into Yarn

In the 'Whatever Was I Thinking' department, here is a sweater that takes beautiful yarn, an interesting top-down pattern, very nice knitting and somehow comes out Just Wrong.  This is Rowan Tweed in a bulky worsted weight in my favorite autumn shades - rusty red and loden green with bits of gold and purple.  We don't need to go on and on with what's wrong with the sweater.  The bulky weight combined with the bold stripe at waist level pretty much sums it up.I'm so very happy that I did not cut the steek that would have turned it into the cardigan of no return.

So I did what any self respecting knitter would do. I unraveled it. 

 tink, tink, tink.

Then I washed and dried the yarn.

Now it is no longer an inappropriate sweater.

It has possibilities!

DeStash Season

Last week's SnowMageddon missed us here in Western NC - Blogging about freezing rain just doesn't cut it.  But spending a day or 2 housebound can make for some desperate closet cleaning.  That includes yarn.  I have yarn that I purchased on 'spec' with great intentions.  I'll weave rungs and placemats!   I'll make a felted hat - or 20!  I love this yarn - Why not buy 3 in every colorway?!  Love the yarn; hate the ghastly color.  No problem - I'll dye it!

Some things happen; some just don't.  So I am sending yarn out to more deserving homes at bargain prices.  So far, I have only photographed 1/2 of one box and am getting skeins of yarn posted almost daily in my Etsy Shop.  I have plenty more, believe me.

So stay tuned.  We have lovely wool and mohair - some is even handspun!  We have cottons!  We have spinning fibers!  Are books next?  What about fabric?

And even more importantly, will we get more of the snow that the meteorologists are predicting?

Progress Check

In my last post, I made a list of what is/will/should be happening. All in all, it has been a very good week! Here is the update...

• The Roofing dude is about to fix the creaking rafters. Check.  We have raised high the roofbeams, carpenter.
  
• The Plumber has my leak on his schedule (as soon as he gets back from Europe!).  Still broken, minimizing the use of plumbing, which means that laundry is piling up and I skipped my shower this morning.  I did spin out some dyed fiber, but captured some the grey water to use in soaking mohair locks
  
• The Solar guys are about mid-way through their installation. And should finish up tomorrow!
• New entry.  The furnace dude comes tomorrow to give the old geezer of a furnace it's yearly tune up.
  

In the world headquarters of Smoky Mountain Fibers...

• I'll be working at the Locally Grown Gallery this weekend at the WNC Farmers Market. An excellent day, selling lots of yarn, patterns and hats.  I spun a good bit too! 
• New entry. I weighed, bagged, photographed and listed a few bags of hand dyed locks I have had hanging out in the studio for too darn long.  Send them to a new home!
  
• New entry. Keep on spinning - I'm dangerously low on dyed yarns in Locally Grown.

• The day job has been requiring excessive reporting to finish the federal fiscal year, but they are nearly complete.  Done!

• I will lead my first full program on English Country dancing on Sunday. Although not a groundbreaking success, everybody lived through it and my fans were quite pleased.  Lots of new dancers!
  

In Which She Tidied the Basement...

I started this post with 'Cleaned', but even 'tidied' is too strong a word. However, blogging that you made a bit of progress on the basement may put your life in a pretty dreary category. But not in a basement as fine as my own.

I live in a house that is about 840 square feet - rather small by US standards of the 21st Century, but perfectly adequate if...
1. You live alone or with someone that you like a lot
2. You are not a major packrat
3. You have a basement that nearly doubles the square footage of the house.

I qualify for all of the above. Plus the fact that it has both an indoor stairway and I can walk out into the backyard and it has windows along one side make it a particularly nice basement. People live in worse places that this - even in my neighborhood! One side is utility: Clothes washing area, furnace, overflow pantry, root cellar -that sort of thing. When I remodel the kitchen, I'll move the stove down there to dye on, along with the old kitchen cabinets.

The other side is SmokyMountainFibers warehouse and processing area. That's where I keep fleece, roving and dyed fiber, dye in the crockpot, pick and card fiber and store tools and supplies of all kinds. It is furnished with shelving units, random tables and cast-off desks, a boombox and all matter of boxes that is my semi-organized workspace. But it gets a bit cluttered and I can't find the things that I need. Every now and then I bite the bullet and break down boxes, pack up the things that go to the charity shop, throw away useless things that I do not seem to need and have to reason to keep another day. I always find a few feet of space by doing these things and it makes me feel better as I de-clutter and destash.

The last few years I have de-stashed via Etsy and SpinSales and sent fiber to new homes, getting rid of tail ends of fleeces, roving I have not used, yarns I do not seem to want to knit. This year the tradition continues as I post a lovely Icelandic fleece that I just will not get to; some llama I do not love, cone yarns that have been around too darn long, superwash roving that I do not like to spin. Someone will appreciate these things much more than I.

I worked with Sally at the Locally Grown Gallery this weekend to 'winterize' the shop - creating more work surface and storage to keep her (and all of us) productive during the slow times. That little gallery has continued to surprise me - I hope the economic downturn isn't too tough on that business. Sally is an excellent sales person as well as a gifted artist and fine friend and deserves success in this endeavor.

Other weekend good stuff: Bristol dance was fun - great band, lots of enthusiasm.
I baked a ham! yum! Served it with sweet potatoes, collards and white beans.
BronzeBerry socks are about 1/2 done - yeah!

Happy 2008

My first New Years Resolution: Be a good blogger. That means write well and post regularly. I'll certainly try!

After the fun of holiday travel and visiting family and friends, it's good to be back in Asheville. My Sweetie and I visitied his parents in Columbus Ohio, then on to my sister's home in Pittsburgh. I I love my sister very much, have the world's best brother in law and the coolest ever nephews. The guys are 12 and 10, still wonderful guys, even on the brink of adolescence. I love my sister and spending Christmas there has become our tradition. We eat and cook and talk, play with the kids, even work out. They have put in a great exercise room in their basement and she has totally inspired me to get fit. Now no one has any sympathy for a person who wants to lose 7 pounds, but the love handles have got to go! Second New Years Resolution: Lose the pesky 7 pounds!

After family visitation, my sweetie and I went to the ContraDancers Delight Holiday in Morgantown, WV. This event is put on by Warren and Terry Doyle, featured Crowfoot and the Elftones with Nils Fredland and Beth Molaro calling. Although I can no longer dance 12 hours a day, I had lots of fun. I treated it as a mini spa vacation with added fiber and bonus music and dancing! The Lakeview Resort has a very nice fitness center, I brought my wheel and fiber for spinning and feltmaking. I even took my wheel to the dance hall, where I answered lots of questions and had a fine time spinning to the music.

Back at home, I began the annual DeStashing project, aka res #3. Last year, I sent quite a bit of fiber to new homes. It was so much fun, I did it again! I went through a number of boxes, sorted and weighed fiber, posted it in my Etsy store and shipped it out! I know I may have gotten a bit carried away, but it is very heartening and cleansing to redistribute the fiber to other 'holics. I need to hit the yarn next, but it is less interesting.

I came across some stuff I did not know that I had and some stuff I 'rediscovered.' A few years ago, I purchased a merino fleece, but it seemed so greasy that I could never stand it. I know where the white fleece is and fully intended to throw it away later, but decided that hot soapy water might make the dyed stuff want to come to a felting party. So 2 passes through the washer seems like we now have felting fiber. It was still damp this morning, so I'll check it when I get home to see if it has come back to life.

Living in the mountain, we expect to see a bit of snow. On January 2nd, we woke up to genuine snow! Now WNC snow is not Wyoming snow, but it came down throughout the day and there are few if any snow plows. Though just a few inches at my house, there was a good bit at the college so I got a bonus day. I worked from home, but in my pjs! Happily the elderly furnace sprang to life after being MIA for several days. Nothing like that 5 am rumble to let you know that all is not lost.

Photo credit: Stephen Loftis, Special to the Citizen-Times