Stash enhancement...

Yes, I know the ubiquitous Jaywalker socks that everyone is making - It's funny - I have a "thing" that I do not want to follow the crowd. I don't "do" knitalongs, but then again, I do what I want . So what if everyone and their sister is making these! I'm really pleased with the yarn choice, it's something by Sockotta. I'm totally hopeless when it comes to saving ball bands and keeping track of projects! Although I did find a great spreadsheet on the sidebar at Katydid's the other day, I promptly downloaded it. I am at that point where I really need to do a reorganization of stash. I try to keep it all organized - but the tribbles they do like to multiply and spread out all over my house. I think you all know what I'm talking about. I have yarn or fiber in literally every room of my house. The bathroom has a wardrobe from Ikea - it's name is Ivar that I store my "I'm not going to get to it for a while" fiber. My living room has multiple stash corners. Most notably the stash corner with literally ceiling to floor yarn, my bedroom has various ufo's and almost started projects. My kitchen has wool and yarn that I'm wanting to get around to dyeing. It does get to be a bit overwhelming. And what do I have to show you today? Enhancement! LOL.

I ordered a bunch of Brown Sheep mill ends from the Sheep Shed Studio at the end of last week. My package arrived the other night and wow! I'm pleased. The pile on the far left is the grab bag. At the top of the picture you can see the blacks (I asked for narrow stripes). Below the blacks is the spinning "bell" which is mostly white with a dark teal green streaked through it, and on the bottom is the browns, I got a pretty close up pic of the browns... The wool itself is definitely mystery wool - but I can feel a lot of mohair content. Especially with the spinning bell. Man is that thing huge! I'm almost tempted to just felt it as-is and make a cat bed out of it. I placed a cd in the picture with the wool. It's right in the middle (a bit buried), but hopefully that gives some sort of scale as to how much wool I received.

I was quite impressed with this close up shot of the brown tones that I took. I think that a lot of this stuff is going to end up as socks. But I've also been wanting to knit a rug for a while now. Yeah, I know - totally mad! I've got some ideas kicking around in the back of my brain - but essentially the wool itself is so cheap - the mohair content should make for good sturdiness. It is all quite soft, and though I haven't spun enough of it to be able to tell yet, It could probably be used for sweaters - but I need a rug!


Further stash enhancement came from Lisa Souza when I picked up 8 oz's of red ingeo that she had on sale. I hadn't tried ingeo yet, and was curious. I have to say that it really isn't the most fun stuff to spin! It's a definite don't like very much/hate thing. I do like the shine. I don't like the stiffness. I have absolutely no idea what in the world I'm going to do with this stuff. But I've spun up about half of it over the last couple of evenings. I'm thinking that this definitely wants to be plyed with something else. Stay tuned!

I bought some extra bobbins for my Joy not too long ago (I think I have at least 8 now). I've decided that I need to clear some of the backlog out. I mean sheesh - I still have a quarter of a bobbin of camel down that I started spinning at least 4 years ago (I was still in England). So last night I finished off the very last of my naturally dyed corrie, and started the very last of my naturally dyed BFL. Next on the project list is finishing off the camel down bobbin and spinning up some honey coloured tussah silk that I've been saving just for that purpose. I also have a honking full bobbin of honey coloured alpaca that I'm considering doing a three ply with the camel and silk - I'll have to sample first though.

OK - now let's see if these pictures will stay put.... I'm considering moving over to Blog-City - The post editor over there has some functionalities that I really like (an undo button is a good thing!), and customising your page seems to be easier in some ways - but I don't think it's possible to actually get into the source code to tweak things that way, and some functions that I really want are only available on the free version.