People who knit

[tokolosh]

I hate myself. But in a really happy, good kind of way. I just bought myself more than I'll ever need of this:

http://www.elann.com/Commerce.web/pr...d=126635&tid=7

and this:

http://www.elann.com/Commerce.web/pr...tID=&id=118574

and finally, this:

http://www.elann.com/Commerce.web/pr...tID=&id=126598

It's waiting for me at Canada Post and I have no excuse. When it arrives it'll go straight into the huge growing stash of other yarn I looove but haven't gotten to yet. Along with the other mohair and cashmere and merino, and even the plain old plain highland wool. And I'm not even a luxury-fibre or delicate-cycle kind of girl. I have four sweaters lying around already that I haven't quite finished to the fit-for-the-public point, and I don't need any more sweaters anyway. I don't need any more socks. I'm four promises behind on my current 'projects', and I have to go buying all this super-fine stuff that will take 400 stitches to make up a single row and put me in hand-wash bondage for the rest of my life. And it doesn't even get all that cold around here.

I'm zarked if I'll make tights out of that alpaca stuff for winter biking because I know darned well after the first couple of times I'll fling it gleefully into the hot cycle just to get the inevitable ruination over with. I have patterns or even ideas for none of it. But I'm happy as can be, go figure.

Oh well. I guess I could knit myself a house or something.

[Randi]

Autumn is coming up, so finish those 4 sweaters! You'll love them! And do stick to handwashing them - it's a crime not to.

The yarn in the first two links is just what I would buy, I love alpaca! I found some in my yarn basket last winter, which I hadn't seen for years, so I knit a winter hat out that. I realized it was getting a little too wide, but I made it long enough for the edge to be double, so that keeps my ears warmer. I did try to wash it a little to hot, but it still didn't shrink.

Oh socks... I have not knitted those for years, but if I get started, I think I'll remember how to do the heel. Those wollen socks are good to have a cold winter night.

Welcome to PT!

[happylabs]

Oh wow I love that burgandy sweater! And also that wrap. I have never learned to knit. I used to crochet in my younger days.

I have lots of projects in my closet that I should work on but it seems ever since computer came out I do none of them.

Hopefully you can motivate and make something pretty.

[kitten645]

I love to knit but my stash is obsene! If I knitted full time I couldn't go thru it in my lifetime! Those are BEAUTIFUL yarns and I'm jealous! LOL!

[tokolosh]

And do stick to handwashing them - it's a crime not to.

I don't see that. I made them and I paid for them, I can do whatever I want with them, is how I see it. I suspect my unconscious mind goes something like 'the hot cycle is nature's way of making sure you always have excuses to knit'. Without having to make a formal decision to toss. In other words, it's a cull

My problem is I invent stuff. I kind of start with a general thought and then make it up on the fly while I'm working on it. So anything I make I have to wear for myself at least for a while to see if it looks okay because I don't entirely trust my own mind. I tend to do things out of sheer curiosity, not always for aesthetic reasons. And I don't want to be that mad knitter lady who foists weird-looking stuff onto people they're humiliated to wear. But then if it does look fine, I don't feel right about giving away something I've already worn. I may have to move to Antartica one of these days to justify my habit.

The yarn in the first two links is just what I would buy, I love alpaca!

I've never done it before. I've been such a merino girl for so long, and then for some strange reason I can't account for I've started branching out suddenly into all these larney fibres that aren't really my thing. I am strictly a jeans-tshirt-and-runners person. I just kind of got bored with plain wool.

Oh socks... I have not knitted those for years, but if I get started, I think I'll remember how to do the heel. Those wollen socks are good to have a cold winter night.

I am completely socks. Socks started me knitting again about six years ago after a 20-year layoff, because I bike to work. And perversely, I like biking in winter instead of summer and do it more often then. So the quest for warm socks became all-consuming, and once I'd made my first pair I was a total, proselytizing convert to wool. I've been slowly working on a dastardly subversion plan to get one pair of wool socks on every pair of feet I work with, so others will See The Light and become fanatics as well.

Welcome to PT!

Thank you

[tokolosh]

I love to knit but my stash is obsene! If I knitted full time I couldn't go thru it in my lifetime! Those are BEAUTIFUL yarns and I'm jealous! LOL!

That's my problem, I guess. Even if I never do get to them, I just want them. For what they are For their own sake. I want the OPTION of being able to make something with them if the mood ever strikes. When I pick them up I'll tear open the box, wallow for about 20 minutes, and then put them away. The good side about having such a huge varied stash is I can pretty much just ask myself what I feel like making, or working with now. Whatever the answer turns out to be, I'm likely to have something that I can use.

Elann is a very dangerous site.

[kitten645]

I have to agree with Randi about handwashing. I put in way too much time and effort into making something to treat it with anything but TLC. I'll throw my Walmart/Target made in china stuff into the washing machine but anything I've taken the time to make with yarn that I love gets special treatment! Occasionally it's the four minute gentle cycle but it definately doesn't live with my other clothes! LOL!
I've not attempted much beyond a square or a increase/decrease pattern. No socks and not a sweater yet. Blankets and scarves mostly. I am going to attempt a cover for my car driving wheel! I think I deserve to touch cashmere every day!
C

[tokolosh]

I think I deserve to touch cashmere every day!
C

Words to live by I think I just knit too much for things to still have that I-made-this-it's-precious type glow to them anymore. I did go to the trouble of making an entire sweater out of superwash sock yarn recently, specifically for the reason that that way I'd have at least one sweater made of real wool I could always count on. Pretty pleased with myself over it too. But if I just waited around for superwash yarns that I really liked, I'd miss out on so much. So I don't.

I have a plan b) for anything that I spoil by shrinking it. It becomes a Bike Riding Sweater This actually works out pretty well as our primary winter weather here is six months of rain. So you need more than one while yesterday's and the day before's is still drying out. And actually I do take a sort of modicum of care. I soak most things in hot water with conditioner or shampoo to start with, and let the water cool down before they go in the machine, and then it's just a few quick, short agitations in cold water. I've found you sorta-kinda can get away with doing this to most wool items. It's the dryer that does the worst damage. I just decline to try and get so many sweaters actually clean with my bare hands. But that's my limit for due diligence. After that I figure anything with the ingratitude to still shrink itself deserves what it gets.

I picked up my stuff today. That merino/alpaca lace is INSANE. I kind of like the crazed endlessness of setting out to make something human-sized with very fine wool, but this is ridiculous. I had no idea 'lace weight' meant something this fine. It's like knitting with stout sewing thread. Even on 2mm needles it feels loose to me. Starting a sweater with this stuff is like setting out to walk across the Gobi Desert in a four-inch hobble skirt. Or to eat mastodon with a coke spoon.

Yeah, I know - double it up. But there's this other perverse morbid corner of me going 'noooooo . . . . where's the excitement in that? Do it like this. Just because it's so nuts.'

[sana]

Love the socks and the shawl/scarf thing. It has pretty colors I've got lots of sweaters already!

[Karen]

An idea for those with so much yarn you couldn't ever get through it all ... Set a date once a year to go through it all and decide what you could, actually, part with. Then bundle it all up, and bring it to a nearby nursing home, with any spare needles or crochet hooks you might have lying around.

Homeless shelters sometimes will also accept this, or places that work with abused or battered women, as it gives women something constructive they can do with their own two hands, and in the case of nursing homes, helps pass the time. Many elderly women learned to knit or crochet as girls, and it gives them something nice to do. One lady at our church spent time every year with any yarn she could get knitting mittens, and we'd present them - along with others' contributions - every year at the beginning of winter to a group in Boston that worked with needy children.

[tokolosh]

An idea for those with so much yarn you couldn't ever get through it all ... Set a date once a year to go through it all and decide what you could, actually, part with. Then bundle it all up, and bring it to a nearby nursing home, with any spare needles or crochet hooks you might have lying around.

I joined a group this year that meets once a month, and they hold a 'yarn yard sale' at every meeting. It's basically your idea in collective form and the proceeds actually do go to a woman's transition house. And the unwanted stuff is bundled up and handed off to other places such as you suggest.

It doesn't help the individual stash level much It just lets you trade part of your stash for part of someone else's, but the nice thing is that money gets into the transition-house stream as a consequence.