Life is too short for bad yarn

Note: Please bear with me as I play with formatting sentence structure etc. this will go on over several posts but who gets good without practice?

Ok, so yarn diet? Maybe even in my stash their is some unwanted weight hanging around. Also if you count roving (I don’t but that’s me, there is still a lot of work before it becomes yarn) I’ve cheated 2 weeks in. If you are strictly counting yarn? I deserve a frickin Platinum medal because I spent almost 4 hours in a yarn store without buying ANY yarn. That’s right, 0. Platinum – Olympic athletes have nothing on my self restraint.

Today I took a workshop with Kate Atherley from knitty.com and it was amazing. I bought her book (and some Alpaca roving shhh!). In her book there are little blue boxes with tips and quotes and fun. One says life is too short for bad yarn. It is so true.

So I looked through my stash.

Am I really going to use that pastel toned Bernat satin (probably not), the nubby acrylic (I don’t even know what it is…), glow in the dark plyarn (well it is so COOL!!!).  Life though is too short to work yarn that squeaks on my needles, so I think it is time to pack it into a bag with some clothes that don’t fit and donate them to someone who will use it. Maybe someone just starting out who doesn’t know what really nice fibre feels like (ignorance is bliss). So while I try and shed a few pounds on my body I will shed a few from my stash as well. This may be at least in part due to laziness… I promised myself I would update my stash page on Ravelry and donating this means I don’t have to go through the effort of cataloguing it all.

  So what am I working on right now? A sweater… That is me with the swatch, it is untreated, all natural wool from New Zealand and it smells like sheep! I was shamed into test washing my swatch after the workshop today. I realised that if it was going to shrink, I should find out before I finished the sweater back and cast on the sweater front. Good news, I got lucky, no shrinking (though lots of potential for felting if the finished project gets agitated).

I should be more specific than just sweater. It is the Shawl Collared Sweater from Berge France knit using Wanaka Station All Natural Wool from black sheep. The colour is an all natural deep brown, like bark on a tree. I am not making it for myself (sadly many wools make me itch like crazy even with a thin cotton layer between us, there are a few exceptions and blends are my hero). I am making it for my boyfriend of 6 years. I figure that is an acceptable length of time and perhaps if what comes next is the sweater curse perhaps it is time. I believe though that we will move forward together with him dressed sexily in a nice rich brown sweater.

Tomorrow I work. Monday dear Spartan (my boyfriend but because that is silly I shall call him the Spartan) and myself are going out to look for some animal tracks. It is for a school project, my goal is to have the minimum done early, and then go above and beyond when time permits. I will also make soup. Maybe I will try photographing soup making and post it on the blog. I think more pictures are needed than those of my cat and me with a yarn swatch.

Who knows maybe I will even weigh in same day as Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, (though I think he will loose the equivalent of me, where I only have about 20 pounds to loose. Ok perfect honesty? I have maybe 40 pounds to loose. But I’m going to talk to my Dr about that and see what weight she wants to see me at then aim for that. What is healthy. That is the goal).