Holiday knitting

Hurrah, I'm officially on leave! My Out Of Office is on (having been composed at about 9:30am) and I have unsynced my work email from my various i-devices so that I don't get drawn in by anything. Nine days off work and this time tomorrow I'll be in the Lake District - that's assuming I survive the hellishness that is Euston and Virgin Trains mind, oh how I wish I could drive...

Anyway, after much in depth research and dragging various yarns out of the stash cupboard, I have decided what knitting to take! Given that I'm going to be out Doing Things for the majority of the day and that I've got plans to spend lots of time luxuriating in the roll topped bath our rental flat possesses, I doubt I'll need the amount of knitting that I'm taking. But I've learned from the Yarn Harlot's mistakes and I don't think there's any LYSs where we're heading, so I'm going prepared! In the luggage are...

• My Kind of Red shawl (Kind of Blue by Lauren Frehel in Malabrigo Arroyo in Jupiter) this is nearly finished and I'd hoped to get it done before I left, but the rows are getting longer and looooonger so even though I'm halfway through the final repeat its taking me forever. Really like how it's shaping up though and I'm looking forward to blocking it, even if I doubt I'll have enough space in the flat to lay it out!

• My Stand on the Right, Walk on the Left mittens (Frankenfingers by Elizabeth Green Musselman in Mind The Gap by Trailing Clouds) I got terribly excited as soon as I got this yarn and cast on for these amazing elbow length mittens straightaway, then lost enthusiasm for the endless ribbing and couldn't decide whether I wanted to throw in some decreases for my skinny wrists or not. But they'll be a nice mindless knit while we watch the West Wing and I will make a decision about the decreases on the train, I will!

So, that would probably do, but I'm also taking the yarn and needles for two new projects...

• Cheer Me Up by Olga Wedbjer Rambell in Manos Del Uruguay Lace in Silver. Isn't this the prettiest little shawl? Bought the pattern ages ago but have been held up but the first direction which is something along the lines of "cast on 300 stitches using long tail cast on" :s

• Crooked Paths by Melissa LaBarre in Malabrigo Worsted in Simply Taupe. I love me a Mal Worsted hat and I've been wanting something neutral and slouchy like this to wear with my navy White Stuff coat. Obviously I won't now be wearing either of them until next winter, but I'm planning ahead!!

So, does that seem like overkill or a sensible amount? All I'll say is don't be surprised if I post next weekend to say that I finished nothing and cast on nothing...

Oh, I'm taking a knitting book too! I bought Knit To Flatter by Amy Herzog because I really enjoyed her Fit To Flatter blog posts and this book expands on those ideas. I'm hoping it might give me some inspiration to Cast On A Damn Jumper (the COADJ project, if you will) so I'll do a review when I get back.

So off I go with a bunch of finely laid plans that will probably come to naught! I'd like to try and do a couple of short blog posts while I'm away, but that's only likely if I can find an iPad app that actually works properly with Blogger! I'm not holding my breath for that either...

Wish me luck with Euston!

The State of the Stash, Spring 2013

Let's talk stash. Specifically, my stash, my lovely, lovely stash. Judging by the Flash Your Stash thread on Ravelry (a must read) and the sheer number of stash related posts on other blogs, knitters just love looking at other knitter's stashes. Which is great because one of the things I wanted to do with this blog is to try and keep a better track of my stash; whats coming in and going out, whether or not its growing exponentially (which is what it feels like) or whether it's slowly shrinking and I'm therefore justified in buying new yarn.

So, this is the first installment of the State of the Stash, which I'm going to try and post at quarterly intervals (as I don't knit fast enough to justify a monthly post!)

But first, some pictures, because it would be wrong to talk about stash without having pictures as that's the whole point of stash! First, where my stash lives:

That's just an Ikea Billy cupboard

 And here is the inside:

Lovely, lovely yarn!

Now, I must admit that I took these photos a while ago, and the stash has grown since then.... It's still all in the one cupboard (phew!) but the books have been taken out to make space for more yarn!

So, numbers, lets look at numbers. Thanks to the genius of Casey, you can export your Ravelry stash into an excel spreadsheet, thus making it possible to play around with formulas and traumatise yourself with exactly how much yarn you've got. Before I downloaded mine I made sure my stash was updated and all my projects had stash linked, so the numbers are as accurate as I can make them. So, here goes:

THAT'S 19.4 MILES OF YARN! Holy Batman, how can that much yarn fit in one cupboard? Is there a some sort of black hole in there? Should I call CERN?!?

The following Emergency Stash Reduction methods must be employed immediately:

• Relaunch the Single Skein Knit Up project (I shall blog about this soon)
• Cast on a damn jumper and use up one of the THREE jumper quantities of yarn I own
• Start some laceweight projects; those 800 yard skeins are not helping the numbers, damnit!

 

So, we shall see how well I get on with those in the next State of the Stash update, I bet you're all just GLUED to your seats in anticipation!

First, though, I must decide what knitting to take on my holiday. I'm off to the Lake District for a week on Saturday which I NEED LIKE BURNING after the last few months at work. My boyfriend and I will do lots of walking, eat lots of cake and enjoy lots of lounging about in our rented flat, which obviously means I need to take about 4 or 5 projects with me. To the Ravelry advanced search!!!!


ETA: (Okay, I've just read this through and the word 'stash' now looks COMPLETELY MEANINGLESS to me, I've used it so much! Maybe this is how non-knitters feel?)

Yet another craft blog...

I've been thinking for a while that it would be nice to have a personal blog to further indulge my love of crafting, so I've finally worked out how to beat Blogger into submission and here it is! A bit shoddy and a bit green, admittedly, but that appears to be the best I can manage as the 'view HTML' button DOES NOT WORK! Maybe I should change the title to Sian's Shoddy Green Blog...

So anyway, it's another craft blog, sorry about that. I know the internet is filling up with them at an alarming rate, but this is MY craft blog and therefore it's obviously better than any previously posted. I imagine I shall mainly use it to further procrastinate rather than doing any actual crafting... Seriously, I think and read about my various hobbies more than I actually do any, so it's likely this blog will be filled with rather more "inspiration" than actual finished objects. Lots of links to lovely patterns and notions and yarn, interspersed with deep, philosophical posts about exactly *why* I feel incapable of knitting an actual garment or turning on my sewing machine. It's going to be a BLAST y'all!

I'm also going to try not to think about it too much and just embrace a casual, chatty style of blogging rather than worrying about being interesting which is probably what killed The Other Blog. (Do not talk to me about The Other Blog, I feel bad about it already!) So don't expect anything too shiny or impressive because that ain't what I'm here for; it's just me, some knitting and *maybe* some baking if you're very, very good.

Just in case someone who doesn't know me from Twitter stumbles across this, I should probably say a bit about me... Hai random internet passerby! I'm a 30 year old librarian living in London, England and am called Funktious on Ravelry and most other social media. I have been knitting for nearly 5 years and would finally describe myself as "not that bad at it." I own a drop spindle and have done probably about 2 hours of spinning on it in total, which probably doesn't justify the fibre stash... OH WELL! Similarly, I own a sewing machine (a gift from the owner of Twinset & Purls) and would love to emulate the dress making and quilting successes of both that lovely lady and the owner of the Biographia Domestica blog (also a lovely lady*), but am too scared of it to actually do anything with it...** I also bake, nothing special, but I am told that my brownies are delicious (by people who I'm NOT sleeping with, as well!) I have a cupboard full of lovely yarn, a vast amount of buttons and more things that I want to knit than I have the time to knit, especially given that I'm truly, terribly lazy.

So, I'm sure a blog will really help with that! Let's see, shall we?

*(not in the Les Mis sense, just in case you were wondering. They have all their teeth and only have their hair cut when they want to.)
**(Fear is going to be a theme here, you see.)