Catching up

Apparently, October was a really good month for stash enhancement. Good in the sense that a lot of yarn entered the premises. Not so good for the notion of self-control. I may have a rather fatal weakness when you dangle the word SALE in front of me and then flash images of yarn alongside of it. First Elann had a batch of Naturally Pride they were clearing out in bags, so I decided to pick up some, figuring it would be good, versatile sweater yarn. I ended up with four bags in my cart - three in colours for me, one bag of pale blue for my sister. The dent to the credit card wasn't too bad, but Someone Else was a bit alarmed by the box of yarn that was delivered about a week later. Then came the discovery of a sale at Knit Picks. I cruised over there to see about ordering a ball-winder - my brother's birthday gift to me - and decided to see what sorts of sale items were to be found, and found them clearing out their Stroll Tonal sock kits - so I, um, bought three, one in each colour grouping. It was like getting the yarn for half price, with some free sock patterns to boot. I've just updated my stash page on Ravelry and it's, er, impressive. The count at the top of the tab now reads 51. I was a bit lazy in getting the pics of the yarn - I didn't bother taking the skeins out of their plastic bags, and the sock yarns are thus all in groups in their photos, and when I uploaded the pictures I compressed the image size a bit, figuring no one would be concerned on details, since it's yarn, and it's yarn in plastic bags, so nothing is going to be super crisp in those photos. Ahem. Yarn is slowly taking over my house. It is getting knit up, though - see? (Photo removed due to hosting issues.) That's a shrug (pattern is Ester - that's a Knitty link, not a Rav link), laid out for blocking purposes on my laundry rack - or, as Someone Else has dubbed it, my Not-A-Table. I was a bit worried about showing off the mess in the spare room around the Not-A-Table, along with the laundry drying on the lower layers of the Not-A-Table, and tried to set the shot up to minimize the mess, then remembered that I can do some low-grade editing in Photobucket, including cropping! Worries gone. As you can see from the image, blocking round these parts is really laying flat to dry - no pins or wires involved. Just a soak in the sink with wool wash, then carefully arranged into place and allowed to sit and dry. Once it's dry, I'll weave in those pesky ends and then seam the sleeves, and then I should have a wearable object, which means a finished project post and hopefully a cute layering piece for work! It's cold out there - I'm in rather desperate need of cute layering pieces for work. Yes, shopping would probably be significantly faster. But like I said, it's cold out there. I'd better stay here where it's warm and knit away.