Twists of Fate

I’m slowly but surely working my way through the back catalog of Cast On, and have finally made it into the 40s out of 69. I’m on the one where Ms. Brenda is talking about knitting from stash and, well. Yanno. It might be time for me to try to do that.

With my prosperity of the first half of 2007, I went absolutely batshit insane with stashing. If I saw it, and it was shiny, I bought it. Even if it wasn’t shiny, I bought it. If it was a giant turd that could maybe be polished up a bit and made presentable for one of my turdlike relatives, I bought it. And then I bought a bag in which to carry the turd, and some other accessories with which to make it, and perhaps a companion turd or two so it wouldn’t be lonely in it’s little plastic bag in it’s plastic container and some day, should there be an apocalypse that buries my stash, a zillion years from now the next evolution of our race will be using it to fuel their cars or something.

Just like the turds of a zillion years ago are making it possible for me to store my stash in relative safety.

…I got off on a tangent there didn’t I. Oops.

ANYway. I have stash. My stash? Has stash. It’s spawned little stashes of their own…there’s probably a family tree of sock yarn going back a dozen generations by now. And I hardly ever knit socks.

Time for a change! I think I’m going to try to knit from stash until the end of the year, carrying me through the $winterholiday season and all the god damn gifts that entails. I have a couple of exceptions though.

1. Subscriptions. I have a couple of subscriptions (Sundara Seasons, for example) that it would be terribly rude to cancel right now. Plus, you’ll pry it from my cold dead clawlike hands.

2. Needles - I lose needles like an enterprising toddler loses their diaper. I have a mismatched pair of size 8s that I tried doing a hat on. It was uncomfortable, mostly because it’s so cold in my apartment I’m on the verge of seeing my breath and half the DPNs were metal. Which was cold. So, should I need them, I reserve the right to buy the damn needles.

3. Finishing materials. Buttons, perhaps the skein of yarn used as a contrast should I manage to get around to knitting the sweater that I have the rest of the yarn for. Ribbons. Suede of velcro or anything else that would mean the damn thing is finished.

4. Up to four skeins of something like Cascade 220, because I wanted to try to knit a couple of Boo’s in time for Halloween. And, believe it or not, I can’t find the god damn skeins of worsted I was going to use. Or really any worsted that isn’t already earmarked for projects for which I’ll probably need the full amount.

So there you go. I think it’ll be surprisingly easy to try to stick with this, and should I be successful I may extend it. Hopefully I’ll get a job soon and it’ll be a moot point. But I have enough stash to knit something upwards of probably 125 pair of socks alone, so it’s not like I”m going to run out of supplies in this timeframe. If I get sick of knitting, I can weave scarves on the Harp. If I get sick of both I can dye, or spin. Or needlefelt.

One other thing that will be an exception, I should note here, will be containers for stock dyes. I…am having a hard time figuring out how to make stock solutions. It’s my math phobia. We start talking percentages in solution and while I did great at basic Chemistry, it was in HIGH SCHOOL and there were clear directions. Right now, I can’t quite get my brain to find the directions to make stock solutions with the dyes I have. This vexes me, but every time I want to try to fix that, I freeze. I am seriously hoping it doesn’t lead to Dyer’s Remorse, because I’ve dropped a metric fuckton of money on the basics to get a dyeing business started, and if I can just get over this hump I’ll be good.

So many iffs, so little time.

So, there you go. I do hope I’m able to carry this through, from Samhain to Imbolc at least, and make many warm things which will help keep those I care enough to craft for warm as well. And keep my bank account from hemorrhaging any more than it has since I’ve been out of a job.

And if I can’t, well, maybe it’s time to re-home some of it.

But not the Sundara. See above for cold dead clawlike hands.