Stash Busting

Have I even shown you the shawl I'm knitting?

Stash Buster Shawl

I know it's made an appearance on Instagram for my 'post every single day in February' challenge but I'm fairly certain I haven't mentioned it here.

Anyway....

I'm stash busting.  One of my yarn dressers had two drawers of nothing but Wool of the Andes and I decided that needed to change.  I pulled it all out and stuck the sweater/big project quantities back into a drawer.  Next I separated the blues, grays and reds from the greens, pinks and purples.  I am definitely a creature of habit!  All but 3 skeins fell into those color categories!  

I arranged the greens and pinks into a pleasing, (Hopefully. I'm terrible at picking out colors,) display; added two of the three miscellaneous colors into the mix and cast on a shawl. 

Wool of the Andes Stash Buster Shawl

As you can see, it's pretty big.  The idea is for it to be a giant shawl that I can wrap up in almost like using a blanket.  The idea is to also use all that yarn I pulled out of the drawer.  You can also see that I'm not worrying about where the yarns stop and start.  I simply start a new one when the old one runs out.  I don't even want any little, tiny balls of leftover yarns when this project is through.  All I want is a big, giant shawl and an empty drawer.

If I stick to my original color stripe plan, I have three more skeins plus the border to go.  I'm not sure if I'll add the border or not.  It's already pretty big and being garter stitch, it's going to grow considerably when I block it.  I don't want it to end up being so big it looks like a weirdly colored bridal train.  We'll see how it goes.

Despite my urge to hurry up and be done with it, this has been a fun project to knit.  For the most part, I change colors after every two skeins of yarn.  When you're used to knitting 450 yard skeins of fingering weight, Wool of the Andes' 110 yard worsted skeins knit up pretty quickly.  The constant color changes help keep it interesting.  Also, being all garter, I can read while I knit.  That helps a lot too.  Also being all garter and thus 100% mindless, it's a good social knitting project.  The pattern I'm using is Grain  although I'm not sure I can claim to be "using" the pattern.  I simply looked at the start up row and made the shawl my own from there on.

And now, I'm off to clean the bathroom mirror and brush my hair.  Based on that photo, I think both of those things need to happen before I spend any more time knitting.

Who needs Rhinebeck?

Who needs Rhinebeck?  I don't!  I have the newly expanded Center of the Yarniverse.

too excited to hold the camera still

On Tuesday my LYS moved from a teeny-tiny, little shop to a huge, gigantic, yarn filled place across the road.  The new place has got to be at least five times larger and it's fantastic!  Fantastic!!  I didn't get a chance to stop by on opening day (damn moving boxes that refuse to pack themselves!) but I did attend the Wednesday night knitting group.

I was way too excited about the newly expanded shop and all the new yarns they are now able to stock to take decent photos.  The only one I took that wasn't blurry was of Stacy, the shop owner, shoving food into her mouth and I'd promised her I wouldn't use that one.  :)  

And yes, we get to eat at Knit Night.  That dark doorway in the background leads into Ashland Coffee and Tea.  So now, you can buy some yarn and go hang out in the coffee shop or, you can buy coffee and come hang out in the yarn shop.  Center of the Yarniverse now has multiple seating areas where you can sit and knit the day or night away.  And if you check out the coffee shop's website, the stage where the band is playing is now the classroom area of Center of the Yarniverse.

Oh, and did I mention that now that the Wednesday night knitting group meets in the yarn shop instead of the coffee shop, the yarn shop is open for business an extra two hours which means more shopping potential.  Yay!!

See?  Who needs Rhinebeck?  I sure don't!

packing boxes and the Martha shawl

Yes, it suddenly got cold enough to break out my fake Uggs!

As for my knitting, I finished the baby blanket and promptly tossed it in a moving box instead of photographing it.

Next, I picked up the Martha shawl and knit a few rows between packing boxes.  My entire life revolves around packing boxes, giant dust bunnies and piles and piles of stuff.  There are piles of stuff to take to my mother-in-law's house (where we're moving.  Have I mentioned that??) piles to go to storage, piles to donate and piles that are trash.  Of course, we ran out of trash bags in the middle of the process.  And soon-to-be-excommunicated-family-members-if-they-don't-stop-it keep putting things in the wrong piles.  It's driving me completely insane.  And my husband, who HATES to shop, has spent multiple days tire and clothes shopping rather than packing.  The situation would be pretty darned comical if the movers weren't due to arrive in a few days.

Speaking of comical....

Episcopal Chicken

A church cookbook titled Episcopal Chicken.  I have no recollection of putting it there, but it was on my cookbook shelf.  And I think it's hilarious.  I don't know, maybe it's the cardboard and packing tape fumes getting to me, but I find the title laugh out loud funny.  

So, have you picked up on the fact that we are moving next week and the additional fact that we are totally unprepared?  Yeah.  The only way I'm going to get prepared is to sign off from the blog for a few days, maybe even a week or two.  I really, really need to get some packing done.  I'll be back once we've moved and I've unpacked the important things like my toothbrush and my knitting.

And speaking of knitting, I think I'll go knit a row or two.  I have high hopes that today is the day the boxes pack themselves.