Project Two: Camden

As a general rule, I do not knit sweaters for friends. Armwarmers, hats, scarves, sure. But sweaters, that's a bit much.

Once in a rare while, though, you just see something and think "That's ______!" You know, it just is them.

So...

The yarn:
Knit Picks' Swish DK, in Jade. I think it took 8 balls?

The (perfect) project: Knitty's Camden

The result:

The rest: To be gifted to the friend tonight, update to follow!

Project One: The Sweater of Doom

The Sweater of Doom was the first project in the year of stash busting.

It was started in December, originally intended as my mother's Christmas gift. Unfortunately, my gauge proved incorrect, as the sweater proved large enough to fit a large man-- which my mother is not. I frogged the entire thing, and began the year with mass quantities of...

The yarn:


Red alpaca blend (I'm guessing on the fibre-content), purchased by my mother on a trip to Peru. 5.5 balls used in total.

My mother, you see, has a lovely habit of buying me yarn and saying "This would make a lovely _________ for mother!" In this case it was...

The project: Cloud V-Neck Raglan

The result:



The rest: Given to my mother in March, who loves it-- and not just because she's related to me, I hope.

Temptation

If there was one day in the year that I thought I might break my diet, today was it. Why? Because today it was:


The Knitters' Frolic. Room after room filled with yarn. All textures, weights, fibres, colours! There was yarn with plastic gnomes spun into it. Gnomes! And the sales, oh the sales!

Take a look:
And here, for good measure, is a picture of my fellow frolickers enjoying their yarn:




The yarn was so much more delectable than my photos, of course.

But do you know what?

Really, guess what!

I didn't buy a thing. Not the yarn with the gnomes, not the laceweight silk with the tiny beads, not the amazingly discounted yarn. Nothing. Because the yarn I have, the stuff that's already mine, it's just waiting to be knit. And I don't want to leave it waiting.

Exhibit A

To truly understand why I, a dedicated knitter, would choose to spend a year knitting only with the yarn already in my home I feel that photographic evidence is neccessary.

So, here is my stash:


Most of it, actually. Some of it is just outside of the photo's edges. Some is still in roving form. Some of it has already been knit in the two months of stash busting that precede this post (evidence of this to be posted soon). Some of it is shoved into forgotten corners of my home, to be stumbled across one day. In any case, it's a lot. The space the yarn is covering in this photo is, in fact, a queen-sized bed.

My goal is to knit only from this yarn for an entire year. I'll let you know how it goes.