Now that I’ve decided to wind up my Knit From Your Stash participation, I’ve been reflecting on the experience. There has been much Stash Wisdom gained, and I can see the development of it reflected in the posts I’ve written:

First there was the Knit From Your Stash post in which I laid down the rules.

In Tips for KFYS Participants I had a light-hearted look at ways to make KFYS work.

Then I got serious and in Plan of Attack I considered how to make the greatest impact to the stash in the shortest time

Another Way of Looking at Stash came after reading this article, and opened my eyes to bad stash aquirement habits. I don’t think the author meant the article to be a reinforcement of stash enhancement resistance – more a justification for big, varied stashes – but it was a source of many stashy meditations.

KFYS Update and Knitting Upside Down was a two month update with a photo of my stash progress. I decided I’d do this every two months.

Things I Have Learned From KFYS came out of my new and growing stash wisdom, and some of it will no doubt end up in my Stash Manifesto.

Fantasy Projects worked as motivation to develop good stash aquirement habits.

Stash Statistics came when I finally succumbed to spreadsheeting my stash and the reward for the effort was to realise I’d reduced by stash by nearly 30%!

In Not THAT Stash, THIS Stash I experienced my biggest stash threat: adopting someone else’s stash. How’d I get around it? By giving away a third and pretending the rest didn’t exist.

Knit From Your Stash Update was my four month update with more photos and some confessions

To my surprise, I haven’t blogged about KFYS in a notable way since the end of April. But now that it’s the end of June, I should post an updated photo:

In the front, on the floor, is my box of leftovers. Each time I look at it I’m amazed at how much I’ve made over the last four or five years.

On the left is the laceweight/5ply (back) and cotton (front). Second from the left is my 8ply (front and back). Third is 12ply and fancy yarns (back) and handspun (front). The righthand boxes contain sock yarn (back) and sock yarn leftovers (front).

Now for the stash photo after I’d added new aquisitions and the adopted stash to it:

I think I’m gonna need some more boxes.

Tomorrow: my Stash Manifesto

Yesterday, as I was chatting to the neighbour’s dad, the parcel delivery guy turned up. He handed me a soft, lumpy parcel. Now, the beau gets parcels all the time, usually filled with highly exciting things like flash bulbs or obscure camera parts, but they’re not usualy soft so I knew instantly that this was my yarn order from the Katoomba yarn store.

My neighbour’s dad gave me an odd look as I cuddled the parcel and said “yipee! My yarn order!”. But it was more of an amused odd look than a ‘get me away from this fruitcake’ odd look.

Inside there was the Jumbuck yarn:

Intended for the pattern shown. I scanned the pic into Photoshop and changed the colours to see if I’d like the body in brown. I did, which had the bonus benefit of not having to match the grey dyelots. There doesn’t seem to be enough yarn, but the balls are 100 grams each and very compactly wound. The label doesn’t say how much length is in each ball. I guess I’ll find out when I knit it.

And there was more Eri Riva 100% baby alpaca:

Intended for… hmm, not 100% sure yet. Probably a stripey or fair isle vest. It is amazingly soft.

I took a large zip-lock bag’s worth of yarn with me to Sydney and Katoomba. In this mini travel stash was the yarn I bought in Tarcutta recently. It was very cold that first day at the retreat, until I worked out how to turn the central heating on in my room. So created a pair of fingerless mitts and a matching headband:

The headband’s stitches look less defined because I wet it and attempted to block the curl out of it. The yarn bloomed the moment water hit it. I should wash the mitts so they match. I’ve written up the pattern for these and will post it… sometime soon.

Next there was some scarf knitting. I’d brought my green/blue handspun, because since I made the mistake rib scarf for my neckless NZ friend I’d been itching to make one for myself:

It was so lovely knitting up my own handspun. I kept thinking “I can’t believe I made this yarn!”. Definitely motivation for spinning more. The scarf is a little shorter than what I prefer, but long enough to fold over itself. More the tuck-into-a-coat variety.

Then, when I was homesick the second week, I dragged out some 8ply Cleckheaton Country and knit up the beau some Re-soleable socks. They were soothingly fast to knit:

And, thankfully, fit perfectly.

Lastly, there is some non-working holiday knitting. The evening after I got home I dug up the remaining yarn, located an appropriate colour continuation, and finished the Mega Red Socks:

Not a perfect match, but I love them. But I’m not sure I’d buy the yarn again. Knots are annoying enough, but I really don’t like it when they’re followed by an inappropriate colour change.

Yarn aquisitions? Well, I mentioned a few posts back that I was going to visit the Katoomba knitting store. I did, and bought two balls of Eri Riva 100% baby alpaca in chocolate brown, intending to make fingerless mitts. I did start the mitts, but then I got the flu and making up a pattern as I went suddenly became too difficult so I switched to the mistake rib scarf.

Later, at the chocolate cafe Kate gave me two balls of Jumbuck wools yarn – a natural coloured wool – in two shades of grey. I happen to have a lovely round yoke fair isle pattern I found in an op shop, waiting for the right yarn, so when I got home I ordered some extra balls in the black-brown (and some more of the baby alpaca). I’ll take photos of both yarns when they arrive.

It’s very exciting ordering yarn for the first time in months!

I’ve been feeling a bit blah today (sinus infection) so instead of working I’ve been tweaking this blog. I’ve:

* decided I’ve achieved enough from Knit From Your Stash. Surviving six months and getting through 40% of stash has me pretty chuffed already, but I’m ready to move on. It’s not so much that I got sick of knitting from my stash, but I wanted to apply the lessons I’ve learned from it. I’m thinking of writing up a Stash Manifesto to stick to when shopping. We’ll see.

* changed my Post KFYS wishlist to “I Wanna”, which is where I’ll list my fibre ambitions

* removed non-knitting blogs, or blogs by friends who knit but rarely post about it, from my links and put them into their own special bookmark folders

* cut back on podcasts. There were a few new ones in there that didn’t quite hook me in, and I’m beginning to think I may never catch up on all the episodes on my i-pod

* added some crochet magazine links

I also put my name down on the Ravelry list. At this late stage there must be quite a waiting list, but I’m hearing lots of good things about the site and the sooner I sign up the sooner I’ll get to see what the excitement is about. I particularly like the idea of seeing what other’s have made, and what yarns they’re using. And maybe putting up some free patterns of my own.

Oh – and there are a couple of new projects listed in my sidebar, too. I’ll post about them tomorrow.

Hmm. I feel like I’ve been productive, even if I haven’t done any work!

Once I’d recovered enough from the flu to walk, I headed out to see the local scenery. I remembered from the last time I stayed at the retreat that there was a short cut through to the cliff road. It was still there, and being winter it was pretty boggy. But I made it through:

From the cliff road there are several walks to lookouts, with views like this:

And this:

Which, being winter, had plenty of flow, so I headed down this:

To get a closer look:

Then when my Canberra friend, Donna, came to visit on the weekend we decided to do the touristy thing. We jumped on the Scenic Railway, which happens to be the steepest railway in the world. Almost vertical, straight down the cliff side. It’s a wee bit exhilarating:

And leads to a lovely boardwalk through the forest:

With glorious views of the cliffs from below:

And then a cable car hauls you back up again. Ah, Katoomba. Such a lovely spot…

I’m back. And sooo glad to be home. Mid last week I hit that part of a cold/flu where you feel really flat, and got a bout of homesickness on top. Still, I got 2/3 of the work done that I was hoping to achieve, caught up with a good friend and met some lovely knitters, so there were plenty of good bits to make up for moments of sickness and sookiness.

On Monday I hitched a ride from David of Sticks and String, who was heading down from Katoomba to the Epping branch of the NSW Knitter’s Guild, picking up Lara on the way. Lots of interesting chat in the car with both David and Lara. And I experienced my first ever knitter’s guild meeting – lots of feisty old ladies.

Then it was off to the airport… after having to stuff my knitting into my suitcase. Podcasts kept me sane on the trip home. It’s amazing how they can make teenagers with no idea where their pointy elbows are jabbing much easier to bear sitting next to.

I have photos to post, but just encountered a hitch. My desktop computer is in the new workroom, but is refusing to talk to the wireless network for more than a few minutes at a time. So I have my laptop in the lounge. Unfortunately it doesn’t have a program able to crop and resize photos. Thinking I was being really clever, I took the camera upstairs to the desktop to prepare them, then copied them back to the camera and took it downstairs. Then I plugged it into the laptop so I could upload them… and the camera battery ran out. And the spare battery is charging. Sigh.

So this is yet another pic-free episode of knitting and chocolate. If all goes well, I’ll have images of cliffs and waterfalls and knitting for you tomorrow.