Stashing and busting

Little Brewer #2 is a genius. Look at the drawing he did on Paint. This would make a fabulous yarn!

It looks like a sunset. I officially name this color "Jeffrey"

In other news, I've been pondering the rules for Knit From Your Stash.

(if I could figure out how to add a button to my sidebar, I would. HMTL=1, Brewgal=0)

For instance, are the following scenarios within the KFYS rules:

1. Can I buy yarn from a thrift store? Net yarn = +, but cheap
2. Can I take apart items I have already made and re-use the yarn for another project? Net yarn = 0
3. Can I buy items at the thrift store, take them apart and re-use the yarn, yadda yadda yadda? Net yarn = +, but possibly offset by effort.

Can you tell Brewgal has been loitering around the thrift store lately? My zip code has an excellent mix of households that are new families and families that were original owners. This means that when the original householders move on to warmer climes or Leisure World, they downsize. And this often means the knitting stash gets donated.

Yesterday, while Little Brewer #2 and Brewguy were having "guy's day out" at the Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum, Little Brewer #1 and I ran errands. We came away from the thrift store with a great cache of needles and an odd kntted garment. I am not sure how to describe it. It was open in front like a cardigan, seamed under the arms, short sleeved. What attracted me was the geniune norweigan frog clasp and the feel of the wool. I am sure it was knit with unprocessed fibre because I could feel the lanolin. Heaven! And for $2.50, worth the price just for the clasp alone.

I tried it on just to make sure it couldn't be salvaged as a stand alone piece. It fit like a slightly off-center short sleeved blanket. Oookaay, let's frog that puppy!

When I'm finished, I'll post before and after photos.

Crisis!

I had a dental appointment yesterday. Just a cleaning. I say "just" for those of you who do not harbor a deep, ingrained fear of dentistry.

Unlike myself.

WARNING: scary dentistry story follows. Feel free to skip! I've had four root canals in six years to fix problems from prior bad dentistry. In the first, the anesthetic never took effect completely. *feel free to cringe here* Two others occurred simultaneously, about three weeks after Little Brewer #2 was born. Someday I will write a book entitled "The Root Canal Diet." I lost 50 pounds of combined baby and me weight. Perspective: I'm 5 feet 10 inches tall. My weight went down to 125 pounds. And it was not a good thing.

You have no idea how good food tastes when you've been unable to eat for a month.

My reward for getting through this particular appointment without crying was to stop by my favorite local thrift store for a look-see. Twenty-three dollars and one hour later, I came out with the following:
1 Hello Kitty down jacket, size 6
1 Old Navy soccer jersey
1 black purse
1 pair enameled cufflinks
3 long sleeve t-shirts
3 issues of Vogue Knitting magazine circa 1995
2 Bernat booklets
1 copy of animal knits by Zoe Mellor
1 copy of Vogue Knitting - the 1989 reference book

It is the Vogue reference book that has precipitated my crisis. I was taught to knit by my maternal Grandmother (twice, but that's a story for a different post). This is the woman who could eyeball a pattern and recreate it in her head. When she passed away I was lucky enough to inherit some of her stash, needles and her wooden swift. I still have the fair isle sweater she knit for me in junior high.

There, in the book, were the instructions for the knit stitch and the purl stitch. And I became aware, as I once knew, that I KNIT WRONG. At least, wrongly according to the gurus at Vogue. When I knit, I put the needle through the back of the stitch, rather than taking the front of the loop through the back. My purls seem to be ok.

Yet my finished work is, to me, indistinguishable from "correct" knitting. Why then the crisis?

Have I completely screwed up the others I have taught to knit? Probably not. Adding more knitters to the universe can't be a bad thing.

Is my work crap? Various opinions may be voiced, but I don't think so.

I think it is the fear that someone will tell me I am doing it wrong and this will destroy my love for the craft. This fear kept me from knitting or crocheting in public until fairly recently.

So now I'm mad at myself for falling back into the trap of "different=bad." I need to grow up.

Blogfodder

Happy New Year, Everyone! It's that time again, time for New Year's Knitting Resolutions!

1. I will tame (organize) the Stash of DOOOOM.



2. I will either finish or frog the half-started projects and return the yarn to the Stash of DOOOOM.



3. I will attempt socks.

Ok, I'm bored. Coming up with knitting resolutions seems so pedestrian. Let's just say I'll knit more and be done with it.

Lately I've been reading other blogs more than writing my own. I guess I'm not thrilled hearing myself talk. I mosey'd over to Samurai Knitter and saw she wanted to know where we all knit.

I like Samurai's take-no-prisoners approach to knitting. If we were all pirates, she would be the one teaching the new recruits how to drink rum and taking them all for their first pirate tattoo.

I don't usually do what other blogs tell me to do, but what the hell! Photos of my knitting corner.

Here is the corner of my knitting sofa: Note the comfy pillow to support my arm.

and the other corner showing one of my many knitting reference shelves:

(it's the packed one in the middle)

Congratulations Samurai, you've managed to make me blogfodder.