Another good thing about going through my stash--suddenly I got excited about projects that have been so far back on the burner that I forgot they were there at all.

I realized that waiting for the weather to cool off enough to work on the Fair Isle sweater was a dopey plan, so I'm going to start in on the sweater with the navy Cascade 220 when I'm traveling next week. Should be a nice one, I'm looking forward to FINALLY starting it. It's the Threepenny Pullover by Veronik Avery. I'm very nearly sure that I'm going to work a couple of the design elements in that charcoal-gray alpaca handspun I have. I think it would be an interesting, subtle contrast, and a nice soft edging around the neck. Plus, it's worked in pieces, so I don't have to have an entire sweater sitting on my lap to make progress on it.

It's odd, most people prefer sweaters knit in the round because of the lesser amount of finishing required. I don't mind finishing; in fact it's kind of fun. And I really dislike wrestling with the body and sleeves of a sweater twisting and twisting as I work on sleeves. It works well for small kid sweaters, less so for adults. So, probably no more Fair Isle sweater for me. The end result is pretty but the details are a bear.

The first piece of commercial (i.e., not from a family member) mail addressed to Dr. TChemGrrl arrived yesterday. In spite of it being junk I was tempted to frame it, before I came to my senses and popped it into the recycling.

Last night I did my yearly-ish inventory of the stash. I look for bugs, I make sure I still like everything, I take yarns that would be perfect for this years' holiday present theme and put them in the knitting bag, so I don't forget.

And I take pictures and talk about what I want to do with this stuff.

I'm not including yarns that are being currently used in projects, or teensy scraps that aren't worth documenting (my cutoff is somewhere around the 10-yard mark). My current projects are small, and I don't have that many scraps, so this is really almost everything.

Ravelry sets up its stash-documentation in a different way, which I find less useful for actually being able to picture what I have. I've posted a few things as stash there, but this works way better for me.

I should note that my rule for fiber purchases is that I can't buy anything that won't fit in one of the two tubs I have (one is yarn, the other is fiber/fabric/utensils). I realized there's a surprising amount of space free right now, which should work well considering that I have two large fiber-buying opportunities in the next month and a half.

Section 1: Sweater yarn:



The yarn on the left is that Shetland I was complaining about last week. This is proof of the boringness: 12 skeins, about 1900 yards of sportweight 2-ply, roughly 1 1/4 pounds. Should be enough for the cabled sweater I have semi-planned.

Yarn on the right, navy blue Cascade 220. I think it wins the prize for longest-stashed yarn, now that I've completely rid myself of some dopey purchases from 2003, the first year I got back into knitting. I have a sweater in mind for this yarn, and I'll probably start once I finish the Fair Isle sweater that just needs a button band. Once I get going, I think that project will be a zippy one.

Section 2: Other largish-project yarn:



The light blue is cone of laceweight linen, and at 2000+ yards, is enough for just about anything. One of the yarn shops in Madison has a punch card, and I had bought *just* enough stuff to fill it up several months before I left, so this was my parting gift to myself. A rare "no idea what I'll do with it" yarn. Could turn into a light sweater, could turn into a shawl, could turn into curtains. I'm interested to work with the linen so I expect that a pattern will jump out and bite me eventually.

The white is the fingering-to-lace weight spindle-spun wool I blogged recently. A scarf, or a warm thin lining for mittens.

I cheated a bit with the red in the middle, because I am working on something that uses it (ball #4 is hiding because it's attached to the project). But the long-term nature of the project is such that it may be a good long time until I touch any of these. It's a huge self-designed shawl project that I'll probably sell the pattern to when it's done in 30 years.

The navy is Blackberry Ridge laceweight wool/silk blend. It's actually pretty heavy for a commercial laceweight; I swatched something in this yarn a few weeks ago and it stalled right there because this yarn is wayyy too heavy for Shetland lace patterns. Pretty, but the scale was all wrong. It'll probably become a wide stole when I can find the right pattern. Celtic knotwork, maybe.

Part 3: Heavier weight, more than 1 skein:

Clockwise from upper left:

Very early spindle-spun yarn, brownish-gray Border Leicester. It's a nice color for a rustic type of teddy bear, if I find a person that would like such a thing. But it's a little ornery for next-to-the-skin use, and not nice enough for display. Out of everything here, it has the greatest chance of sitting unused forever. Usually when I say that, though, finding the right project becomes something the back of my head actively works on, so maybe it will get used.

White wheel-spun 3-ply Corriedale mutt. It's been attached to a long-standing plan to make a heavily cabled Christmas stocking, but it could do anything.

Gray wheel-spun 3-ply alpaca. Lighter in real life. May get combined with the navy worsted weight yarn for that sweater project.

Cornflower 2-ply Aran-weight yarn from Grisamore Farm. I might spin some yarn of the same weight for a hat/mitten combo, or something. No real plan, but it makes me happy in this form so I'm not in any rush.

Gray Cascade 220, leftover from a sweater I knit for J. Bought this yarn at the same time as the un-knit navy, so I suppose that yarn isn't the oldest one in the stash, but this is different because it's leftovers. So there.

Blue/purple commercial wool, very similar to Cascade 220 in general feel. I didn't buy it, and I'm not sure where this came from, but it's been attached for me forever and ever. I've come up with ideas before but it's never quite right for its theoretical projects. I have one in mind now, though, and I might actually finish it off finally.

Section 4: Largish amounts of lighter-weight yarns:

Along the top: fingering-weight 2-ply from Blackberry Ridge. 95% of this will be leftovers from the Fair Isle project; all that sweater needs is its button band and this is probably another vest's worth of yarn (I mean, the green has hardly even been touched). I have a shawl in mind, we'll see if that happens or if a vest pattern jumps on me instead. I must admit that the idea of another Fair Isle in this colorway does not fill me with joy.

On the right side: some sock yarns, a completely mysterious ball of white, and some early sportweight 2-ply handspun. Probably socks and I-don't-know-what.

On the left side: various bits of Dale Baby Ull. I think of this stuff as "permanent stash", I buy a ball or two in cheerful gender-neutral colors when I'm running low. I used a good amount in the chick toy and baby sweater for my nephew. Will turn into some type of baby thing at some point in time. I like the way the red, orange, and black look together here, I may need to wait for some goth babies to come into being whose parents will allow them to wear some black.

Section 5: Oddballs:


This section is considerably smaller than usual, and I even have gifty plans for most of it. Hooray for successful stashbusting! Little bits always eventually find a home. Not much else to say on this one.

Section 6: Fiber:

Again, I'm pleased with the level of stashbusting on little bits. Last year's fiber section required three pictures. But all those little packages are done, getting spun right now, or are mostly-used and sit in the "for teaching spinning" bag, which is a useful thing.

The two big balls of roving are the remaining Shetland I spun for the sweater. I'll probably leave these in reserve in case I need to make more, and after that I have no idea, maybe laceweight for a shawl, because clearly I don't have enough shawls planned out yet.

The other two bits are both Corriedale wool, both from sources which were local to the place J's parents bought them (NY state and Alaska, respectively--and may I point out what excellent taste they have in craft-gifts, this stuff is exactly what I would've approved of if I'd been there), and both very nice fiber that I really need to come up with a project for. I do have a colorwork hat/mitten/scarf set half-planned for myself which might work with these, though my original mental picture used red and off-white. But there's enough fiber for a project of that size, and it'd be nice to use them together. That'll probably be the next spinning project if I ever get through the green laceweight.

And that's it. Fairly low on fiber right now, fairly high on yarn in amounts that are too large to call oddballs, too small for an interesting large-scale project, and too eclectic to turn into one stripey sweater. I have enough yarn for 2 sweaters, 4 shawls, a pair of socks, a baby sweater, and about 8 sets of medium-smallish projects of an undefined nature. I have enough fiber for one sweater-sized project, but not all together. It'll keep me busy, for sure

A preview of how the Biscotti yarn is knitting up:

It's a tad grayer in real life. Also, this section is much more heathery than some others. At the very beginning and the very end of the skein the individual plies got more mixed up than they did later. I'm knitting toe-up, and will do each sock from the opposite end, so that the less-interesting coloration gets saved for the part of the sock most people won't see. Now that I'm a little bit into the ankle, things are starting to line up more, and I can tell by looking at the skein that by the end of this sock things will be even closer.

Happy. Happy, happy, happy. It used to be that I'd hear people talk about how they couldn't stop knitting if they had a yarn with slow color changes, curious to see what came up next. I've never felt that way about any of the commercial yarns I've used, but the last two projects I've talked about, both of which used dyed, handspun yarn, have definitely done that to me. I've been working on this sock while eating cereal in the morning, while reading blogs, while waiting for a movie to start--all places I don't usually bother. It's just so much *fun*.

So I'd gotten the first "you have no student exemption" notice from my smaller student loan. And to them, I said "screw you, you're not getting any interest" and paid them off that day.

Today, I got more-or-less the same notice from the much larger student loan. (This one is NOT getting paid off right away, much as paying interest hurts me.) Anyways, I've been expecting the notice, it's no big deal. Except that there's a small slip enclosed in the envelope that offers to reduce my payment such that I'd be paying this loan for 25 years instead of the more traditional 10.

25 years. Cripes, really? 25 years is a longer term than most mortgages nowadays. In 25 years most people will be paying their *childrens'* college tuition. It doesn't give specifics, but I bet in 25 years you get the chance to pay 3-4 times the original amount of the loan. Are people really that dumb about their finances that they think this is a good deal in the long term? While I understand that there are lots of people out there who don't make lots of money right out of school, presumably the people paying off these loans have a college education. Most of them will be making considerably more than I was making in grad school, and I saved enough that making the student loan payment would not have been impossible, even before the relative economy of living with someone else.

Just... gah. I'm so anti- giving corporations my money as a tax on my own ineconomies. Ever.

(Related Anecdote: My mom recently told me a story which is apparently a Family Classic, though I didn't even remember it happening. My mom and my grandma came to Madison with me when I first moved, and we went to Kmart to get everything that couldn't be carried on the flight over. Gramma gestured at a pile of washcloths and towels and asked me what color I wanted.

"Oh, I don't need those," I said. "I already have a towel."

I've changed little enough in the intervening 7 years that my mom needed to explain the joke.)

Feeling some spinning malaise right now, or at least, blogging malaise at my boring spinning.

I've been working on the Shetland again, which looked like this the last time I took a picture:

That's the first 4 skeins. This is for a sweater, so I'm trying to keep things pretty consistent even though that's a little tricky with this carded prep.

I just finished another 2.5 skeins, another 400-ish yards, which brings the total yardage up to about 1900, and the total number of skeins to 12.

Big whoop. Every skein looks exactly like those 4, just with different colors of ties so I know the difference. There's enough for a sweater now, though, so I'll be thinking about that once it cools down for good.

Then there's the laceweight wool-silk blend. An old picture featuring my favorite pj's:


And from after I'd picked it up more recently and spent a weekend or two with it:


Pretty much the same except for the higher-quality camera.

I've spent a few movies' worth of time spinning on that since that picture was taken, and I swear that the bobbin looks exactly. the. same. Stupid laceweight. I love it and I think it's going to come out looking great, but several hundred yards' worth of progress looks like NOTHING.

I think I mentioned before that this is a commercial wool/silk blend. I originally bought two ounces of the green and two ounces of gray with some kind of sock plan but I decided the fiber wasn't fun to spin a hardwearing yarn from, so it morphed into laceweight. I've been slowly adding the gray in alongside the green which gives a mottled effect.

I recently bought 8 ounces' more of the green, in the hopes that I can do a nice big lace project with this. It's a commercially available fiber, so the color is pretty close, but I'm positive that there's some dyelot variability. So what I've been doing is slowly adding in more and more of the new color as I finish up the older one. That way, even if there is a difference in dyelot, the overall effect should be subtler and more intentional-looking. The second ply will be all the new dyelot, which should also tone down any differences. And then there'll be another whole batch of plied yarn that's just the new fiber, completing the color change. I'll probably tag which skein came from which batch, and knit them in an appropriate order, when it comes to that.

All I want to do with the current bobbin is finish spinning the old fiber. At this point, I've given up on really filling up the bobbin, as it appears that this is the Everlasting Bobbin Of Doom. In another few years of constant spinning I may even have two bobbins like the one above to show you.

(Incidentally, I keep insisting on calling this yarn "green", in spite of it not having any identifiable color. The pictures above, as different as the colors look on my screen, are accurate depictions of how lighting conditions affect the look of this fiber. I think that, knit up, it's going to end up sort of slatey blue most of the time.)

Hmm. Will this billboard be more effective in curbing teenage pregnancy, or teenage engineering? I can picture it now....

Teen Engineering: A Danger To The Very Fabric Of America.
We've all seen it. Young people whisked away from the family hearth by the lure of Matlab. Without a care for the consequences, they're out there in full view of God and everyone, engaging in their filthy... *whispers* engineering. Calculating maximum loads! Designing bridges! Determining the most appropriate balance between tensile strength and brittleness! Improving open-source software! Modifying coatings for improved biocompatibility!

They disgust me. Clearly the only answer is to link this scourge on our nation with a lack of sexually available and willing peers.

Paid off one of my student loans last night. Whee! Financial liquidity! It was the smaller one--the WAY smaller one--but it still feels like I'm half-done.

I'm really wiggy about owing money. I don't even use credit cards because I just want to avoid that whole deal. So even though my student loans were getting deferred all through grad school, I still felt all nervous about their existence. Part of me wanted to start paying them off already, so I could just stop looking at them. Instead I did the sensible grownup thing and let them be while we were starving grad students.

It's worth the money just to see the numbers start to go down after 7 years. Oh, and you know, the education.

An effective method of getting an entire subway car of people to stare at you, without even doing anything disgusting: spin some yarn.

I was too busy looking at my spindle or the friends I was having a conversation with, so I didn't even notice. But as we got off the train J and our friends were highly amused. Because New Yorkers have lots of practice at ignoring even interesting things, so getting and maintaining the attention of 20-odd people for 5 minutes by doing something repetitive that involves sitting still is quite a trick.

I was going to do a big writeup of the fun weekend I had, but the local paper put up a picture that says a good percentage of it:


Awesome day. I taught several dozen people the very basics of spinning (the VERY basics; I held the spindle and put in twist so they didn't need to worry about that part). For all of them, we spun one long armlength, then I plied it back on itself and handed their own work over to them. For some of the littler kids who couldn't not break the fiber I added some of my own singles from the spindle so they still had enough for a bracelet. I saw the getting-into-it lightbulb go off for a few of them; we'll see if we get any new spinners at the next guild meeting.

One useful thing for me was that I learned how to explain how to spin. I've tried to show some of my friends before, but I hit a vocabulary wall; so much of my own spinning process was all kinsethetic learning, which leads me to say incredibly helpful things like "do it different until it feels right." But by the end of the day I was able to explain an inchworm draft in a way that would get a 4ish-year-old spinning in less than 3 minutes, with a tiny bit of coaching. Next time I won't have to confuse the first 5 people I teach.

(Oh, and one of the girls in that picture drafted picture-perfect fingering-weight singles the second her hands touched the fiber. I think some people are genetically predisposed towards perfect spinning.)

I have been really overusing the macro button on my camera lately. I got this camera for Christmas and have finally been figuring out all the settings that make things look good, and the macro setting with pretty, small projects is the crack-laced ice cream sundae of visuals.

Anyways, with projects like this, can you really blame me?


That started out long ago as this:


And got spun up into this:


The lace pattern was very simple; I had something more complicated planned but when I went to chart it out I realized the scale kept getting bigger and bigger, so this got stripped down to its bare essentials. 1 row of double yarnovers and centered double decreases spaced 6 stitches apart, 3 rows of straightforward stockinette. Except the double yarnovers, which need an alternating knit/purl stitch. That's why there's a teeny purl bump in between the column of holes.

I spun two ounces of this fiber and used 2/3 of it for the scarf which is plenty big, so I think this pattern could get used with just an ounce of nice fiber, spun fine.

You'll notice this is an all-stockinette scarf. It curled quite a bit when I was knitting it, but it easily blocked flat. I think this is because the gauge is pretty loose. If I was knitting this for a garment I'd probably use size 0's, while this was knit on 3's. The looseness helped it open up a lot during blocking even though it's silk. I think with a few wears it probably will curl up some, but that doesn't bother me.

I'm really happy with this. Every step in the process was fun, and made me love the fiber. I started spinning the fiber about two years ago so it's been sitting around for a while, but it's totally worth it.

I seem to be living in The Creativity House right now. All over the apartment, there are parts of costumes, finished knitting and spinning projects that need a wash before getting photographed and put away, stray threads and tufts of fiber, brand-new pottery, empty spools of thread, lace swatches, fabric that needs to get washed before it's sewn up, drying paint, roving getting spun.

Oddly, I think the burst of energy has happened because we both have jobs now, and are out from under paying for the apartment in Madison (we were paying two rents from February until June). Without any big scary stuff left to worry about, we can take all that energy and put it into something useful and fun. So J's been learning how my sewing machine works and I've been digging into some long-untouched stash for holiday presents.

It's a fun life we have right now.

More recently read books:

16) Limbo: A book about the transition from working-class to middle-class. Useful to give me some vocabulary. I've done research and read about this stuff before, so it wasn't anything new, but I appreciated that the interviews seemed less... clinical? than some previous stuff I'd read. Probably because the author is someone from the working class who talks about his own experiences, and is a journalist, not a sociologist. As usual when I read this stuff, I'm grateful that my family's always been so supportive, because that's one element of the upwardly mobile experience I haven't had at all with the family I care about, people asking what the point of all this education is.

17) Grip's Historical Souvenir of Cortland: For some genealogy work on my family; there's several pictures of my great-grandfather's brother in there, though because I come from uncreative namers, for a while we thought it was my great-great-grandfather, who had the same name.

I did actually read most of it even though I was just there for the picture. It's a really odd book. Lots of wonderful pictures of all the people who worked at the post office, the newspaper, or were members of various fraternal or charitable organizations. Also, no discernable structure whatsoever. A description of the choir at the Catholic Church, then some talk of the history of a particular mansion, then a list of all the previous mayors of the town, then some talk of a book that must have been popular at the time, which was based on the life of a local. A funny little historical thing, neat to have a chance to look through, but not something I'd recommend to someone without any reason to be interested in Cortland NY.

18) She's Such A Geek!: Women write about science, technology, and other nerdy stuff: A cool gift from Shira and Ari. Like with Limbo, it's not so much an in-depth psychosocial analysis of why geek culture is so unfriendly to females, as some honest talk about actual people's experiences, the fantastic and the boring and the depressing. Mostly on the Girl Power end of the spectrum, though.

19) When You Are Engulfed In Flames: The new David Sedaris book. If you like his work, you'll like this; if not, you won't.

20) The Hippopotamus: A book by Stephen Fry, who's mostly known in the US for things like being the narrator's voice in the Hitchhiker's Guide movie, but who has done a million things for the BBC, and written some amusing books besides. (I already talked about The Ode Less Travelled). This was fiction, and I liked it when it got going, but there was a lot of stuff early on where I saw what was supposed to be funny, but it didn't do it for me. Unlikable characters being unlikable just don't make me laugh. I'd strongly recommend someone away from this and towards Paperweight, which is a book of essays which are actually likable and funny. (or his blog, which I visit occasionally purely to do an American fangirl squee.

21) The Island of the Day Before: Eco at his Eco-iest, and not at all a compliment. Here's a test: go read The Name of the Rose (don't worry, it's a mostly-good one). Did you skip over the chapters of obscure religious debate that completely stalled the plot? Me too. If you skip the plot and just read those sections, welcome to 3/4 of The Island of the Day Before (more philosophy than Catholicism actually, but the point still stands). Don't even bother. If I wanted to be taught about medieval rhetorical devices, I'd read a damned book about rhetoric, not a novel.