I am actually knitting my stash yarns & loving it! I am whippin’ projects out right & left with yarns I already own instead of drooling over yarns online or at my LYS. And, the best part, I love doing it! For some reason last year I became a true yarn hoarder! Now that the $$ well has tapped dry, I am really happy that I have all this stash to work with. Nothing super fantastic, brand name mind you but I love it all! I have plenty of wools to do what I need, plenty of large lots to make sweaters and random balls to be creative with. That doesn’t even get into all the cone yarns I have. They are very slowly dwindling down also though! Yippee!! Okay I confess I did just get an order of wool of the andes for the brocade sweater in rowan38 but who can pass up that price for that yarn?? Not I!! I promise I won’t do it again any time soon! I have more sweaters going than my poor little corner of the living room can handle! Pretty soon I may have to banish a few out here to the ‘office’. Let’s hope not.
Oh & crazy me! I pulled out some gorgeous lace weight merino single spun that I have from Uruguay to start a shawl. Now, when you hear (or read in this case) the word shawl you may think of charlottes web or some such lacy item. No, this shawl is knit stockinette in a half circle. My own design based on a shawl I saw a woman wearing last winter at our favorite restaurant in Santa Barbara, Longboards. Gorgeous solid knit in a camel color machine knit cashmere. Closest I can get is lace weight merino on my budget. So I started out single strand on size 1 circulars and cast on 700. Now, I don’t like my edge to roll so I start out with a smaller needle for about an inch then go up to my working size. After 12 rows, one inch, I stepped it up to a size 2. When I realized it was taking me an hour to go one row of 700 stitches with that tiny ass thread I decided that I probably have enough to double it up & move up to a size 5 needle. So in the interest of saving myself the headache of getting halfway through then frogging it because it’s taken a year to get that far & I don’t want it anymore, it is double strand on size 5’s. Not quite the fine knit I wanted it to be but I want to use it sometime this year! The half circle will be done in stockinette stitch then I will pick up all around the edges for a simple ruffle edging. I loved it on this woman! For me, so much more practical than a lacy shawl. Although I do love lacework & how pretty they end up. I find I just won’t wear it. So there you have the beginning of my merino shawl. We’ll see how far I really get on it!