Stash:
-verb (used with object)
1. to put by or away as for safekeeping or future use, usually in a secret place (usually fol. by away): The squirrel stashes away nuts for winter.

-noun

2. something put away or hidden: a stash of gold coins buried in the garden.

3. a place in which something is stored secretly; hiding place; cache.

4. Slang. a supply of hidden drugs.

 

Ok, so it’s a little different when you’re talking about a stash in the knitting and crocheting world, but I suppose if I had to pick the definition to closely match a yarn stash, it would be number 4. A yarn stash is like a yarn addict’s secret drug stash. It’s always sitting there, tempting us, mocking us, calling to us….yarn does have it’s own voice when brought together in any sort of collection and set aside; it does not  like to be ignored.

We are distracted by the colors and textures as we walk past our stash and catch a glimpse of it from the corner of our eyes. We can be doing something productive, such as homework, housework, or running errands, and occasionally our minds will drift to the supply we have stashed away and the things we could do with it. Oh! the possibilies…of course, it’s all those possibilities that make it difficult to actually use the yarn we’ve accumulated.

That wonderfully soft Frosting yarn I picked up when it was marked down from $3.99 a skein to .99 cents a skein a few months ago is the source of my frenzy tonight. That, and the fact that I haven’t knit  anything in a few months. I miss the sticks.

YarnBee’s Frosting in Candy Dots

I have crocheted a few items, but that’s mainly because I don’t have a lot of time and wanted to get a few finished objects out there. Crocheting is definitely the way to go if you want to finish a project quickly and mindlessly. Knitting takes much more focus and time, at least for me.

So I’m sitting here in bed tonight(feeling a little under the weather and blah), and my eyes wander to my closet, where the majority of my stash sits organized in a little closet hanger(and what can’t fit, stuffed in corners and boxes all around the rest of the closet). There’s more in a drawer storage container in the living room, but I’m not thinking about that now…I’m looking at the Frosting.

YarnBee’s Frosting in Party for Her

 

 

What to do with the Frosting. It’s so pretty, fluffy, and soft.

I didn’t know it would sit there that long when I bought it…I was sure I’d find something to do with it. In fact, I had only bought 2 skeins of each Party for Her and Candy Dots color, and was sure I hadn’t bought enough. I would have bought more, but I over-bought on Airy(also marked down to .99 cents a skein. Yay me!).

YarnBee’s Airy in Lime

So, in an effort to stop the taunting the Frosting was giving me, I grabbed size 16 needles(the pink, pretty ones I love to use so much), and cast on 10 stitches. There. I had started something with a few moments notice. I quickly knit a guage swatch with 10 rows.

Hmmm….it was looking like something already(and feeling like something to…oh, so soft and fluffy!) Aha! This is going to be a flashy, skinny scarf purely for decoration. It’s so light and fluffy, it should be fine to wear in the summer, too, so I’ll be able to put it to use soon. Take that, Frosting!

 

Of course, the Airy is still taunting me…laughing at me.

I have a few rectangles knit up out of the pink and the green, and will sew them together eventually. It will make a nice little throw, sparkly and soft and cushiony. Yum. But what to do with the rest of it? I used one skein to make my daughter a fluffy sparkly skinny red scarf a few months ago, which she loved, but how many skinny scarves of the same material does one household need?

I will have to think about this much more. I wish these specialty yarns from YarnBee had patterns and suggestions on the labels, but they do not. They tempt us with the textures and pretty colors, then once we’ve taken the bait, we are left with a closet full of yarn that thinks its’ jokes are oh-so-funny.

If anyone has used these, or similar yarns, please let me know what you’ve made from them. Even if you haven’t used them, please share any ideas or inspirations you may have when you look at them.

Sorry the pictures aren’t super great-they were taken with my cell phone. Usually the pictures turn out great when taken in daylight, but as it is after 11 p.m., that’s not an option.

Also, I have this Truffles yarn as well, and seriously have NO CLUE what to do with it. But isn’t it neat?

YarnBee’s Truffle in Dutchess

Okay, okay, I know I wasn’t going to start another project until all my school work was finished, and the quarter was over. That really was the plan. Of course, plans change.

My daughter loved the granny square blanket I made, and promptly wrapped herself in it when I showed it to her, claiming it for her own. Of course, I had made it with the intention of keeping it for me, either on the couch for when I needed something to curl up with, or at the end of my bed(it would go well with my room, adding much needed color). I tried to explain this to her, but she wasn’t having it. We made a compromise: she would be allowed to keep my granny square blanket until I made her a blanket of her own. Sigh.

This gives me the chance to make a blanket using this wonderful pattern by Erin Lindsey. It’s a granny square blanket, but instead of lots of little squares to sew together it’s one large square. You just keep adding row after row until you think it’s large enough, changing colors as you wish. This is also another stashbuster project, helping me to use up some of the two garbage bags worth of odd yarn I was given a couple months ago.  (***Note:Erin has generously shared her pattern for free so that we might all make this fun, easy, pretty blanket. Please, if you use the pattern and mention it on your blog or wherever, give her credit as this is her original pattern.)

The pattern crochets up quickly, and is very pretty. I see myself using this again and again. It’s a lot of fun, and again simple and mindless, so I can do it while I’m watching t.v., or thinking about a  million other things. I’m hoping to have it finished in the next two weeks. Maybe she can take it on her trip to Florida this summer when she visits her grandparents.

Anyway, here’s a picture of the progress I made last night:

So, I think I finished the granny square blanket I had started. I still need to weave in just a few ends. I was so excited to have sewn the last square together, though! It looks much better than my pot holder blanket. And if feels good to have a finished object besides a hat or scarf.

 

Here are the pictures:

 

 

So YAY ME! I’m so excited. And this means that I can start another project soon now that this one’s finished. Of course, that may have to wait a couple weeks till the end of the school quarter, since I have so much homework to do and finals coming up. But until then, I can at least sift through all the patterns I have and think about what I get to try next.

Ok, so in my last post, I mentioned the horrible red, black, and white first attempts at making an afghan of granny squares. The pattern for this was found on the  back of a yarn label; not sure what kind, as it was just a misc. label in a bag of stuff and the front of the label was damaged.

The squares were fun to make, and big-7″x7″. They went fast, too. But as this was my first attempt, it didn’t turn out very well. I was also imaptient, and didn’t want to be bothered to either take my time to avoid mistakes, or go back and fix them. I have since learned that it is much better to take your time in the first place, and fix mistakes as needed, or you will have wasted time, energy, and patience in something you don’t love in the end. Or like. Actually, it’s something you may be embarrassed of altogether. But as it is something I am able to learn from, I’m going to post it here for everyone to see:

The Square-

Flat View(shows all sorts of texture)-

 

The Finished Project-

 

Yes, it really is that funky and uneven on the outsides. And it really does have a couple pieces of yarn that despite being woven in, still stick out(some are too short to be woven in and stay, others are just…frustrating). There were major mistakes made in my rush to get this finished, causing me to “abandon ship” and try to salvage what I could. In the end, once I salvaged what I could, I went around the thing with black yarn again, with a double crochet stitch, to try and give it a little more of a finish. It helped, but didn’t cover all the mistakes.

And once I got it finished, I realized that just because a square is fun to make, doesn’t mean you’ll like it once it’s all sewn together.

 

On a side note, while making this blanket, it was dubbed “the potholder blanket”. I had friends over one evening for dinner and board games. At one point, I took the squares out in order to show them what I had been doing lately, since I was excited to make my first blanket. No sooner did I bring out the squares did one friend (the Bear) ask why in the heck I was making so manhy potholders?! He then proceeded to go on a 5-10 minute tangent about my potholders, and the potholder blanket I was making(all in good fun-he even had me laughing). It was then that I realized I was, indeed, making a blanket of potholders. Sigh.

 

A couple of months ago, I started learning to make granny squares. This was all new to me, and I made them even before I learned to make a hat. My first attempts were disasterous, and led to me making one of the ugliest mini-afghans I’ve ever seen. It was terrible. Part of it was the pattern that I used(it looked like a bad 70’s/native american/macrame-style monstrosity), and part of it was my impatience and lack of any real skill at this. It was supposed to be a large afghan, but after a turn for the worse, all I could really salvage was a mini-afghan. Eventually, I will have the nerve to take a picture of it, and post it here. Right now, no…I’m doing well just to speak of it, let alone show it to the world.

I trudged on with my granny-square making, trying out a couple different patterns, making one here and there, and finally found a pattern for a super-basic one that I liked in the “Happy Hooker” crochet book. I can whip one out in 6-8 minutes, it’s fun and easy, and it’s kind of a no-brainer, so I can do it while watching t.v. or having a conversation. Even better, they’re really cute.

I have all this yarn that someone gave to me a couple months ago(about 2 garbage bags worth), that I haven’t quite known what to do with. some aren’t even full skeins, and they are the oddest assortment of colors. I’ve been using them to whip out some of these little squares, and just stashing them in a drawer.

I sewed some of the purples and whites together, and like the way they look together. I left it small, and for now it drapes over the back of my couch. It’s not large enough to cover up with…I just use it as a “foot blanket”. My feet sometimes get really cold when the rest of me isn’t, so it comes in handy.

I like the way the squares sew together, and the texture it has.

 

I’m not sure how exactly I’m going to stitch all these together. I like the pinks and purples and whites all together. Some big afghan or something. I’ll have to think about the design…whether I want to continue to do some planned design, or just scatter it randomly. And maybe a coule throw pillows to go with it.

 

Sorry if this is all boring and whatnot…I’m just fascinated with making these little things, and my drawer is filling quickly. I’ll post the end results on here when I finally do put all these little things together to make something.

I finally worked out some of the bugs with my phone, and was able to upload some pictures I took the other day of some of my finished work. I know, scarves are basic and easy, and I’ve made tons of them in the past, but I’m super excited because these scarves have matching hats!!!  What’s so big about matching hats, you ask? Well, these are the first hats I’ve ever made. They look cute, they fit, and from what the ‘models’ say, they’re comfortable as well. The blue hat was the first, and I followed the pattern to the letter, but the gray and green hat I modified a little bit to make it bigger. These are not the intended wearers of the hat, they were just nice enough to model them for me so that I could get a few pictures of my latest accomplishments. My daughter, Em, was a somewhat reluctant participant, if you can’t tell. My friend Brian on the other hand was all about showing off the goods.

 

 

The scarves each took about 5-6 hours to make. That seems like a long time, but it was something I worked on while doing other things like watching t.v., talking with the other moms while our kids were in dance, or chatting on the phone.

The hats took about 3 hours each, and because it requires changes in stitches with each row, and a lot of counting, I didn’t do anything else while I was making them. I didn’t do it all in one shot(who has 3 hours to sit and crochet?), so the 3 hours were spread out over several days.

The gray and green scarf and hat set will be sent to a friend in the Netherlands. Eventually I will get around to knitting him a set as well, but that takes so much longer and a lot more concentration/skill.

The blue set was going to be for him as well, but it turned out a little small. It will be put away in the closet and taken out next winter for my son. He loves the blue camaflouge-style pattern the yarn makes.

I haven’t been able to do any knitting or crocheting for more than a week as I’m trying to focus on all these school projects I have coming due, the kids upcoming dance recital and all that surrounds it, and keeping the house in order. I do have one of my next projects picked out though: a beanbag crochet multi-colored turtle. It’s really cute and measures 7 inches long. From the pattern it looks like it will require some focus, and not the mindless crocheting of a scarf. The first one will be for a friend in NY. I always get him some kind of turtle whatever for birthdays, Christmas, and just because. He has a birthday coming up in July, and this will be perfect.

Okay, so I have been trying to re-teach myself how to knit and crochet for the last 6 months using internet resources and books from the library. I used to do it when I was younger but didn’t have the patience to actually finish any of my projects, aside from the occasional scarf. In the yarn world, unfinished projects are referred to as UFOs. I have seen more UFOs in my time than the residents of Roswell.

Here is arecent project that I have finished:

My Little Red Knitted Bag-