Tuesday, March 06, 2012

Stash Honesty - February 2012

Can't let myself get out of the habit of posting every month about my ins and outs!  But just a quickie, I really should be knitting, heh!

I had a bit of a Wollmeise splurge this month - no surprise there, really!  2 grey (maus jung), one black (schwartz) and one lovely purple (madame souris).  Yum yummy yum yum.  Am thinking of some sort of stripey garment for myself...will see!
Apparently there is a terrible epidemic of Bunterism going around my knitting guild group - which of course I also caught after the last meeting. We are making a huge string of bunting for the guild's display at the Sydney Royal Easter Show this year.
Hopefully getting these four red Bunts out of my system will appease the Bunting Overlords!

In:  12 x 50g balls (d*mn you huge wollmeise skeins!!)
Out: 8 x 50g balls
Metres used: 1058m (YTD: 2172m)
Stash neutral? No! +9.5 x 50g balls.  Oh well, maybe March will be my month!

Friday, March 02, 2012

I must BEE crazy - or am I?

I had a good month in February - even though it was a short month, I managed to crank out 37 sexypuffs for my Beekeeper's Quilt.  Helped in no small part by Connor insisting I bring my NingNing with me when I sit with him at his little table while he "draws", and so on!

Just for LynS, here is a shot of all the puffs done so far - all 244 of them (well, actually, there are 18 missing, I found an extra ziplock bag after I'd put them all away again!).
And I thought I may as well lay them all out, so I can check my calculations of how many puffs I need to make.  So 226 puffs makes roughly a 77cm/30" square - with 14 puffs in the columns downwards, and 16 puffs across.
So if I want a QS quilt - which is about 150cm x 200cm, that means I'd need about 4 times this many puffs...which gives me around 900 puffs!  That's a lot different to 1829!!  Wow!  Maybe this will only be a 2.5 year plan, rather than a 5 year one!  Not so crazy after all ...

So far, I have knitted with 14 different yarns, many of which were donated by lovely knitting friends. To help me remember what yarns and what colours I've used, as well as the source of the yarn and how many puffs I have in that colour, I have made some "colour cards" where I can keep a sample and notes.  Some of the samples are very small (I usually cut them after I've used up as much yarn as I can for the puffs!).
My favourite yarn so far is Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks That Rock Lightweight - gosh this is a smooshy sproingy lovely yarn.  It is truly lush.  Such a lovely yarn to knit with.
Similar to the STR is Colinette Jitterbug.  Mmmmm yum.  I've also enjoyed knitting with Handmaiden Casbah and Plucky Knitter - those merino cashmere blends are just so soft.  And for depth of colour, of course, you know what I'm going to say ... you can't go past the Wollmeise!
It's been fascinating to compare the different yarns, and a delight to try some I hadn't knitted with previously (mmmmMalabrigo Sock, I'm looking at you!). 
Any thoughts on the random puff arrangement?  Maybe that is the way to go, rather than a specific pattern.  I suppose I still have plenty of time to consider this, since I'm only 6 months into this project!