Burn Baby, Burn!

I just wanted to write an entry because I feel like I’ve made another mini break-through with my stash busting. Woohoo!

I made some baby booties recently, just to use up some of my leftover Rowan Big Wool, and just a few days later found out that there had been a new addition to the family! So I got all excited at the prospect of sending them off, when I also found out that said bambino also had a 2 year old brother. Now anyone who knows anything about small children knows that you don’t gift a new baby, and leave out the sibling unless you want a fit of jealousy and Freudian angst to come out of it. Or at least that’s what I told myself as an excuse to make another knitted gift

I made a hat out of some yarn that had been leftover from a (disastrous) jumper of mine (seriously, if you still have a whole ball of yarn left over when you finish, you must have made a mistake somewhere!). It nearly went all wrong when I got inches and cm confused and started a hat that wouldn’t fit a cherry let alone a small toddlers head, but luckily my brain kicked in around that time and I sorted it out before I embarrassed myself further.

I’ve also been successful in passing on some yarn that’s been in my stash since I first got started. Before I worked out the difference between DK and Aran, I bought some yarn to make a(nother disastrous) jumper, but fortunately I realised my mistake before I got too involved. It did mean the yarn was lonely while I tried to work out what to do with it. Ultimately I decided I couldn’t give it the love it needed, so sent it on to a lovely lady in India and asked that she pass the good karma on.

So, while I myself have nothing to show for my efforts, my stash is a few 100g lighter than 2 weeks ago. Yay stash busting!

Thanks for reading!

What doesn’t kill you only slows you down

Lots of people have been asking how my jumper’s been coming along, so I thought I’d give a brief update. It hasn’t really progressed too far because of the story I will tell you now.

After Christmas, due to my hinting not quite working out as I’d hoped, I placed an order with Rowan for one years membership. To sweeten the deal, Rowan were giving away a free project kit, which looked pretty cool too. So I remember getting to the final stages of my order and being asked to select a colour. The colour choices were red, white, blue and purple. I didn’t much like the white or the blue, so I was obviously left with the choice of red or purple. Here’s where it gets hazy, did I order the purple, like I think I did OR did I order the red because I thought it would be a lipstick red, rather than the rusty red that came in the post? Who knows, all I know is that I hated the rusty red and my invoice didn’t specify what choice exactly I had made.

Despite this, I thought I’d push on and make the project. I thought I’d go for the shawl option, thinking ‘Someone’s bound to like it if I make it, and what the hey, it’s free right?’ Except, I’ve found if I hate the yarn for a project, I’m just not going to make an effort to get the pattern right. 2.25 balls of the hideous yarn in, I see it, the completely impossible to ignore mistake. Now the dilemma, do I keep going and hope no one notices the mistake with gleaming neon lights around it or pull the needle out and try and fix it? I’d come so far. If I carried on, I’d never wear the shawl, so how could I expect anyone to love it as a present? So I pulled the needle out, frogged back and it all went pear shaped. My attempts to catch the stitches failed and the lace started to come apart before my eyes. Nooooo! I’d spent so much time on this bloody thing and now it refused to be saved!

So I frogged it. All 2.25 balls worth of knitting that I’d hated every minute of. Then I felt a pang of sorrow for my jumper, left neglected because I didn’t want to make a mistake from lack of concentration. I immediately searched online for someone looking for the yarn in question and offered it up to them. This supports my theory of ‘deny, deny, deny’. If it doesn’t work out, hide all evidence you tried.

On the plus side the lack of the evil project and yarn means that I’ll be able to work on my jumper. And I’m taking a lot more care with this one.