Tag Archives: Knitting & Spinning

Since I try to limit my design yarn to that which I’m going to use — and since I’ve only planned about a year out for projects & books — my design yarn stash is, I believe, under control.

I’m not so sure about the personal stash.

Let’s just get the Shetland out of the way, shall we?  It’s personal yarn that I count as overlapping with designing yarn, and it’s kept in a cedar chest in the dining room.  It tucks under the window, next to the front door, and is occasionally used as extra seating.

I have two vintage cedar chests.  One was left to me by my grandma, the other I found on (yes, you guessed it) Craigslist.  Both have contained yarn at some point in time.  In fact, I got the second just to contain yarn.  Now my grandma’s chest stores linens (and a little bit of yarn) and the larger the Shetland.

Cedar chests are great for yarn storage IF you know what’s in there and IF you enjoy emptying it all out once in awhile to doublecheck you really do know what’s in there.  (I do.) You have to do a bit of digging otherwise, to find things.

I do try to have the Shetland arranged by color…but that doesn’t really work so well.  If I had (or made) dividers, I’d be able to manage it a bit better.

On the topic of Shetland…I have a variety of colors from J&S, Jamieson’s, Elemental Affects, and a little bit of Alice Starmore Campion.  The latter is for sale on my Ravelry stash page — I can’t justify keeping Shetland yarn I can’t use for designs, and, since it’s discontinued and not all the subs for the other companies’ colorways are exact, I don’t want to use it.

Sock yarn and miscellaneous yarn is kept in the English Arts & Crafts bookcase (Craigslist) (see above pic).

Sweater yarn is either in the bookcase as well, in the barrister’s bookcase in the living room, in our bedroom closet, and in grandma’s cedar chest.  It’s not that there’s a lot of it — probably six sweaters’ worth*? — just that it’s ended up in several places.  It used to all by in the second cedar chest, but the linens ended up there.  I’m working on destashing some fleeces & roving (if you’re local, and are looking to build up your fiber stash, leave me a comment!) so it will end up in the bins that used to hold those items.

Even were I to give up designing, I think I have enough yarn to keep me busy for many, many, MANY years.

Do you have a large yarn stash?  Is it a SABLE? (stash acquisition beyond life expectancy)?

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*Okay, here goes.  After making this list, I was so delusional with the 6 sweaters’ worth guesstimate.  Granted, some of these are more vest quantities than sweater, but to me, that counts.

• AS Hebridean 2 Ply
• AS Hebridean 3 Ply for St Brigid, wip
• AS Hebridean 3 Ply in Storm Petrel
• AS Hebridean 3 Ply in Machair
• Beaverslide Mohair/Merino
• Black Water Abbey (since I design with their yarns, I *could* count this as design yarn, though I bought it at my first Stitches West well before I began designing)
• Classic Elite Lush (I think I still have this, though I’ve wavered between rehoming it & keeping it)
• Jaeger Shetland
• Some llama yarn from a llama named Nicole
• La Lana Wools silk
• Marr Haven sport
• This & this from Juniper Moon  (see how I sneak two onto one line?)
• A slew of Rowan denim
• Some Rowan Magpie
• Sublime Angora Merino
• En0ugh Sundara sock for a sweater
• Alpaca (actually charcoal, swapped the spice)
• Warm Valley Romney/Alpaca
• and a Bohus kit (Turquoise Light)

Ancient Egypt in Lace and Color by Anna Dalvi,  Cooperative Press, 2012, 89pp.

I’ve always loved Anna’s first book – and I love this one even more, if that’s possible!

Anna presents us with 12 different patterns, featuring gorgeous yarn from indie and small dyers such as Cephalopod, indigodragonfly, Rocky Mountain Dyework, Verdant Gryphon, and more.

Each shawl was inspired by some aspect of ancient Egypt:   the gods (Thoth, Set (the cover shawl), etc), myths, places, and more.  The motifs range from fairly literal (the waxing and waning moons in Thoth) to more abstract (Girl with the Rose Red Slippers).  The colors themselves are symbolic and pertain directly to the theme of each pattern.

I love all the attention to detail and thought that Anna put into this collection!  This is a book you can read and enjoy, on top of the patterns.

Each pattern has clear charts.  Most have pictures of the shawl laid flat to show its shape. Shapes include  rectangular, triangular, crescent to circular, with various permutations in between.

My favorites include Nefer, a lovely crescent shaped shawl with nupps, offered in two sizes:

and Girl with the Rose Slippers, a half octagon with different sections, each symbolizing part of the tale:

…and Nefertari, a gorgeous swooping triangular shawl.  Anna is tall and lithesome — she looks stunning in these larger shawls!  I got to see her in it at this past TNNA.  Just gorgeous!

Would you like to win your own PDF copy of  Ancient Egypt in Lace & Color?  Leave a comment on this post with your favorite design (and why!) by midnight, PST October 3rd.

Photos © Caro Sheridan

As noted in the previous organization post, I have one big major division:  yarns for designing vs yarns for personal use.  There’s a bit of overlap when it comes to Shetland yarns — I have a lot in my personal stash but do consider those as both personal and designing.  For this post, I’ll address just design yarn.

Most of my design yarn is for specific projects.  I’m totally thrilled to be given yarn out of the blue — who wouldn’t be! — but I feel very strongly that if I’m given yarn by a yarn company, it’s for professional use only.  If I can’t use it in a design, or at the very least for swatching, I’ll use it for giveaways or similar things that will promote the company.

I like having my design yarn visible and accessible.  For the longest time I had it in a large basket at the base of the sectional sofa.  I also had some in a leather tote next to the basket.  Then, as I acquired more, some went into the tall bookcase, along with personal yarn.

I wasn’t really happy with this:  yarn in three (at least) different places, mingling of design & personal yarn, and yarn not really accessible without dumping out the tote or basket.  Plus, the basket and tote contents were vulnerable to the cats, Rigel, and the occasional wine spill (WineAway is a great product, by the way, and works on yak yarn (sorry, Carl!)).

So, I’d been on the lookout for a solution.

Just a few weeks ago, on a walk on the Strand with Dave and Rigel, I noticed a garage sale sign that also said — oh thrills! — ANTIQUES.  We stopped in on our way back, after turning around at the Pier.

And I found this (well, here it is in my dining room):

Isn’t that the neatest piece?  It’s oak with oak veneer, and poplar dove-tailed drawers.  It has rolling fronts, like a rolltop desk, but the center one doesn’t really work so well. We estimate it’s from the 19-teens.

We spent about 3 hours removing the bottom panel (damaged), sanding the edges, and cleaning it (including each of the 27 drawers).  It’d been kept in the owner’s very clean, cement-floored, totally finished garage, but nearly 100 yrs of existence means a build up of dirt and grime.  I still need to take some denatured alcohol to it, but as you can see, it’s now in use.

I keep my needle cases and miscellaneous supplies in the upper left three drawers, and beads in the lower left and lower center drawers, but all the rest is design yarn.  I’ve grouped the yarn for the next book in some of the center drawers.

I love it. I can see bits of color and yarn, which makes me happy.  It’s easy to glance & see what’s where.  The shallow drawers mean that the yarn is layered only 1 skein deep, so if I open a drawer, I can see it all without digging.

The scale of the case fits our dining room better than the bookcase I had there before (that bookcase is now in our bedroom), so that’s a happy bonus.

Next post:  Personal yarn!

I just published my MFPP ebook, Autumn Nostalgia!

As I’ve gotten older (old enough to have college age kids of my own) I think I’ve gotten more nostalgic about college.

As I note in the introduction, my college experience, at West Point, was NOT conventional.  I generally tell people, when asked how I liked the military academy, that it was a valuable experience.  Yet I do have some fond memories.  And there’s no denying the beauty of the campus in fall, with the brilliance of the red and orange foliage contrasting against the grey granite buildings and crisp blue sky.  I’ve not yet been to a class reunion — politically I’m so far away from most of my classmates I feel it’d be uncomfortable — but I’d like to visit.
By the time I did my pre-vet work (and zoology degree) at UT Austin, I was much older (relatively speaking) than my classmates.   In fact, once during class, when I was chatting with one of my classmates –I think about the Army reserves — something, in any case, to prompt him to ask my age — he blurted, “But you don’t LOOK that old!”  (I think I was 26 or 27.)  UT is a pretty campus, and I love Austin.  My parents live nearby so I do get to occasionally visit.

Vet school was, well, vet school.  Though I’ve stayed in touch with some of my classmates, I really don’t care about visiting College Station.  I do have very fond memories of where I lived — in a little house in a cluster of farm buildings.  The farm belonged to Ed, who taught at Texas A&M and ran cattle and built things around the farm (like the little house).  There were squirrels, possums, snakes (including water moccasins and copperheads), beautiful birds (Texas is great for birding), and an alligator in the bass pond. Really.
Before  I meander too much, here are the patterns:

• Applejack Cowl
• Tailgate Mitts
• Farewell Summer Cardi
• Farewell Summer Hat

“Organizing your knitting” encompasses so much, when you really start thinking about it.

I divide it this way:

1.  Yarn Stash

a. Personal yarn (note: some of this yarn also counts towards Designing, such as my Shetland yarns I purchased prior to designing).  Divided further into sweater quantities, sock yarn, fingering weight yarn, shetland yarn, lace, miscellaneous and so on.

b. Designing yarn.  Divided by project (i.e. all the yarn for the next book is together).  If not for any specific project, divided by company.

2.  Knitting books.  I try to group these by type (Aran/cables, Fair Isle/Stranding, stitch dictionaries, techniques, etc) but they’re also divided, for practicality, by size (i.e. what fits into what bookcase).

3.  Knitting tools.  This includes needles, crochet hooks, tape measures, stitchmarkers, blocking equipment, and all the various things that are handy to have.  I have a Namaste Cali Buddy Case in green that I keep my primary go-to things in — coil-less safety pins, stitchmarkers, scissors, needle gauge.  I also have a Daisy Muir medium needle case (the red one) that I keep other (often longer) things in:  a small ruler (that I picked up at TNNA from Images Stitchery Design — I don’t see it on their site, but it’s a pretty 6″ wooden ruler & needle gauge combo), pens, bandaids, etc.

4.  Individual patterns.  The obvious division is PDF vs hard copy.

5.  Miscellaneous business-y things.

I’ll address each section in its own post.

How would you divide & conquer?

I’ve occasionally alluded (often by “procrastinating by decluttering” sorts of tweets, or my posts here; here and here; here; and here) that I’m one of those people who enjoy decluttering and organizing things.

This may, too, be why I design, and especially the types of designing I do:  going from chaos to order, from a myriad of choices and ideas to a final design.  Something to ponder.

We live in a small house (approx 916 square feet).  We love our little house (read the intro for California Revival Knits to hear me rhapsodize about it) but, well, space is limited.

We have our bedroom, a second bedroom that is the cats’ room (filled with Dave’s books and a few other things besides the cats), the bathroom, the living room, the dining room including its nook, the kitchen, and the laundry area/breakfast nook (used for laundry & computer area). Oh, and a small hallway.

Okay, before anyone asks: the cats get their own room because they’re indoor only cats and Rigel has a dog door and though Meggie and Cali have no interest in going outside Obi definitely does and he knows how to use the dog door so he must not have access to the dog door & thus they all must stay in their own room.

When we close Rigel’s dog door in the evening the cats come out.  Considering whenever I look in at them they’re all cuddled up in their basket I don’t think they mind tremendously.  Rigel sleeps in his kennel in the closet (that sounds vaguely Harry Potter under-the-stairs to me, but he (Rigel) often puts himself to bed, so apparently he doesn’t mind). The cats sleep with us.

In a perfect world, we’d have another bathroom, and a third bedroom that could really function as a guest bedroom…as well as a studio, or at least storage for all my yarn stuff.   Considering we’ve no interest in moving, we’re working with what we have.

I abhor clutter.  I really do.  It offends me.  I’m a big believer in William Morris’ quote Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.

Clutter, to me, includes excess pieces of furniture.  It includes excess knick knacks.  It absolutely includes things that serve no purpose and/or just don’t get used.  It’s grown to include books I like, but simply don’t refer to or don’t re-read (I’m happy to re-read favorite books).

It includes perfectly good yarn that I know I won’t use.  Oh, that’s a hard one.

Regardless, we have a carefully curated collection of decorative stuff.  Seashells that we’ve collected on various trips, corralled into jars or vases.   Pretty rocks and minerals either displayed alone, in a bowl, or in one of our many bookcases.  A small collection of Zuni fetishes.  A shed antler I found on a visit to an exotics game ranch in Texas while in vet school, that the owner graciously allowed me to keep.

I’ve massively downsized my book collection, both fiction & nonfiction.  In fact, the only book collection that’s grown is my knitting library.

I finally found a new home (with one of the teachers where Dave teaches) for the cross stitch & rug hooking supplies I’d been keeping, thinking I could someday use them.  I never did use them.  I passed on some natural dyes to Jaala (who’s starting to dye yarn now!  gorgeous yarn!).  I know I have some other art & craft supplies that I should re-home, but I’m working myself up for that.

Furniture-wise, if something gets added, something has to go, or at least things get massively rearranged.  We’re balancing having pieces that we use & need with not having too much.

In the next post, I’ll give you an overview of how I organize my knitting.

In the meantime, here are some links on organizing your knitting supplies.  If you know of any others that you particularly like, let me know in the comments!

• Tina from Peacefully Knitting just did a lovely room re-do;  read about it here.
• How to Organize Your Knitting Supplies  Common sense, basic info.
• Evernote I love Evernote.  Personally, I don’t use it the same way for knitting stuff (though I do use it to collect urls for pertinent links), but I do use it in other ways for designing, tech editing, etc.  That’s a blog post in itself.
• Delightful Order Obviously, a kindred spirit.  I particularly like the re-purposing of the dresser.
• Loopy Ewe    Stash storage.  Love the glass cabinet.  My yarn in my bookcase doesn’t stay as nicely stuffed, but maybe I just need to stuff more in there so it’s self-supporting.  Here is Sheri’s post on needle storage.  Read the comments, too:  lots of good info.
• From Knitting Daily:  How to Organize an Unruly Stash
• This is an old, looks-to-be-abandoned blog, but it’s all about organizing knitting with various contributors.
• Peace of Mind  Basic info.
• On Ravelry:  Organized Knitting etc Club, Home Organizing, Storage Ideas. There are others but these seem to be the busiest/ most active.
• And oh, isn’t this lovely for by your chair or sofa?  It’ll never be in my budget, but I do like it.  However, since I don’t really have any straight needles, I don’t think I’d ever get it, even if it were in my budget.  It’s a leather version of those old Naugahyde ones that I think Namaste re-did.  I can’t find a pic or post about the one I’m thinking of, which is intensely annoying.

The Wrought Socks KAL has started!  Cast on now, finish by Oct 31st.  Prizes so far include Knit Picks Aloft yarn in Tranquil to knit your own Undersea Garden & stitchmarkers, and a PDF copy of Anna Dalvi’s new shawl book, Ancient Egypt in Lace & Color.

I’m going to Rhinebeck again this year!  Cooperative Press will again have a booth (I’m thinking it’s in the same location as last year — in the covered buildings, opposite end from the barns).  Of course all of us authors there will be merrily signing away copies of our books.

There’s also going to be a Cooperative Press party in town Saturday night — check out some of the details here or here.

In the spirit of Rhinebeck I’m planning on bringing (and wearing) one of the sweaters from my next solo book.  I won’t be able to resist bringing the Wrought Cardi as well, though I wore it last year.   Rhinebeck is really one of the few opportunities for me to really cozy into some of my handknits.

Are you going to Rhinebeck?

Congrats to Kathy #20!  I’ve emailed you.