Knitting and spinning. The fun never stops.

Yeah, as I figured, there is wisdom on each side of the plastic bag fence.

I’m getting a weird visual here of a fence made entirely from plastic bags. Anyone ever seen a braided rug made entirely from Wonder Bread wrappers? I have. (A quick google image search tells me that my sighting was not a lone one. Go figure.)

A number of you report that is is not a good idea to store wool and other natural fibers in airtight plastic for extended periods of times for the reasons outlined in yesterday’s comments, and that does make sense to me. Apart from the segregating of like yarns for projects, my main purpose in ziplock-bagging my yarn has been moth deterrent.

As I said, I’ve never had any problems with moths, but I prefer to err on the side of caution.  However considering the size of my stash, there is a good chance that some of it might spend years in plastic bags.

So I ordered a whole bunch of some herbal moth deterrent from Simple Thyme, and will place that in liberal amounts in the stash room and in the linen closet. (I didn’t tell you that more than half of my very large linen closet is dedicated to stash storage, did I?) That way, not only will my home stink purty, it will hopefully discourage any little winged b*st*rds that could possibly try to move in.

So I’ll let any new sock yarn bask au naturel, sans ziplock bags. I think the rest of the stash I’ll leave as is — most of it is in non-airtight bags anyhow.

Sock-a-Doodle-Doo!

Speaking of socks, lookie here.

The Fern Fronds socks are done. They are knit from Sanguine Gryphon Eidos sock yarn in the “Socrates” colorway, on 2mm needles.

This was my first sock project completed using the Hiya Hiya needles. I like them very much. Only time will tell if the join remains the same. I’ll be sure and let you know if it doesn’t.

YUM

My work friend who gave me blueberries from her father’s place last week (remember the big-*ss berry pictured in the blog afew days ago?) kindly brought me another bag today:

You can be darn sure I’ll be nom-nom-nom-ing on these in the very near future!

Lucy the Critic

This morning, as is my wont on weekdays, I watch the “OMG What Are You Doing Up At The Hour Seriously Early Morning News” on CBS before leaving for work. And as usual, Lucy was curled up in my lap, dozing. At the very end of the newscast they did a story about the woman who won this year’s hog-calling contest at the Illinois State Fair and showed this video clip:

As soon as the woman started, Lucy snapped her little head around to watch the tv, a look of supreme disgust on her face. She stared at the tv, quivering with annoyance until the “performance” was over.

Quite the little critic, isn’t she?

There were a couple of comments questioning the wisdom of storing yarn in ziplock bags, so I googled around a bit. I couldn’t find anything online cautioning against storing stash in plastic bags. Anyone know of any reliable info on this?

A good reason to store in plastic is to keep yarn dust-free. Not there there is ever any dust in my home. Another reason, is to protect it from any flying varmints that may be around. Now, I definitely don’t have any of those, thankfully.

I’m not sure why exactly I started putting my yarn in plastic bags — I guess it started with the non-sock stash. When you have 10 skeins of a yarn in one colorway, it makes sense to bag it together. I just kept going with the sock yarn.

Thanks, by the way, to CC, who recommending securing the “intersections” of my wire cubes with zip ties — I ordered a bunch of them and will do so forthwith to prevent cube collapse.

Just in case you wondered if I was ever going to knit again, here is an update. The sock:

The shawl:

And here is one bissfully sleeping puddy-tat:

Hey, y’all. So happy to oblige you by being the poster child for sock yarn stash gone wild.

There were a few questions in the comments about my stash containment system.

A few weeks back I was hit by the urge to downsize and de-clutter (try to contain your laughter here) and get rid of stuff. I’ve been working on that — at least two-thirds of my clothes and shoes have been carted off the premises, never to return. And I’ve been working really hard on the de-cluttering.

I am seriously lazy. When I come home from work, I do not feel like going through the mail, sorting it, and shredding the shreddables. So I stack it on a desk. When new sock yarn enters my domain (cough, cough) I pile it on the desk rather than bag it and file it in the stash room.

Up until a few weeks ago, my stash room was full of shopping bags of yarn, willy-nilly, hither and yon. The older stuff was bagged in zip-lock bags, but I hadn’t been keeping up with that.

So I sucked it up and armed with some boxes of gallon-sized zip-lock bags, went in and bagged up the recent acquisitons according to brand.

I already have two rows of shelves built around two walls of the stash room, and a lot of my non-sock-yarn stash is neatly stacked there.

But the sock yarn was hanging out in shopping bags.

So I ordered the cool wire storage cubes that you saw in the last blog entry.

I got mine at organize.com, but you get get them elsewhere. Google. I ordered two sets of 6 cubes and set about putting the sock yarn within. I sorted by brand — I’ve got Fleece Artist in one cube, Socks that Rock in another, Cherry Tree Hill in another. And so on. And some doubled up in one cube — Sanguine Gryphon and Neighborhood Fiber Company share a cube, for example.

I did that organization last weekend and was quite delighted with the results. I ordered and received more wire cubes, because all my laceweight yarn was still lying around unorganized. Three guesses what I just finished doing.

There was a comment about the wide range of colors in my sock yarn stash. When it comes to sock yarn, I never met a color I didn’t like. I’ll knit socks in pretty much any color. Because many of my socks are for other people, or are knit to be photographed for the pattern, I knit in a wide range of hues.

Which came first, the yarn of the pattern? Almost always the pattern. I work up a sock design and pick the yarn I think will suit it. Every now and then I get a yarn that inspires a pattern. The Seaweed Socks (free pattern available from my “free patterns” page — see the tab at the top of this page) design is a good example of this — I got the gorgeous Bellamoden tincture-dyed yarn (from The Loopy Ewe but she has an Etsy shop as well) and it reminded me of seaweed.

But usually the pattern comes first.

It’s Sunday afternoon. Here’s what Lucy is doing:

Hunkering down for a nap!

Because I have achieved precious little knitting for much of the past 24 hours, you are now “treated” to a series of random images.

First, the sky at 6:10am today.

Then, a scary hallway at my office. I can just picture two pasty moon-faced little girls, holding hands, materializing there.

Next up, a cute little Welsh dragon who lives in my office.

And Shaun the Sheep, ready for inclement weather.

Miss Lucy von Ragdoll, being adorable. I love when she lies like this!

And I close with a shocking photo: evidence that I do not need to buy any more sock yarn for a long time. This is approximately half of my sock yarn stash.

Think that’ll stop me? No, I didn’t think so either.

I am making some progress on my Cleite Shawl, just not much.

I’ve realized that these days I do much more knitting on my commute than I do at home. Weekends being the exception of course.

I’m making some nice progress on my second Fern Fronds sock.

This gets knit during the day — on my way to work, during my lunch break, on my way home. The Cleite Shawl gets knit at home only. Which I realize is amounting to about 4 rows a night, after I do any odious but necessary household chores (feeding myself, for example), blogging, and answering emails. But I’m not concerned — I’ll hopefully catch up on the weekend.

To distract you from my lack of progress on the shawl, have a look at these:

These stitchmarkers will mean much more to anyone on Plurk. My Plurk-bud RedEliz (her Plurk name) sent them to me, and they are from the Paper and Yarn Etsy shop. Aren’t they adorable? Thanks, RedEliz!

Pattern Talk

By the way, my 4 newest sock patterns (Einkorn, Ida’s Delusions of Grandeur, Ribbon Candy, and Smoke and Mirrors) are now available at The Loopy Ewe here.

Needle Talk

Thanks for all your comments on Knitpicks and Hiya Hiya needles. I may well be extra hard on my needles by using 2 16-inchers rather than 2 24-inchers, but that’s the length I’m most comfortable with. I tried the 2 circs route with 24″ needles but was annoyed by the extra time it took to shove my work to one end of the needle to knit. Did I ever tell you how incredibly impatient I am?

Lucy is practicing her “long kitty.”