Pattern: Argyle Vest by Amanda Burka
Yarns: Tanis Fibre Arts Green Label Aran. Bendigo Woollen Mills Luxury 10ply, Cascade 220.

For the last year I’ve been on an unintentional yarn diet. I know this is going to sound strange to most knitters, but… you may want to brace yourselves, cover your eyes or skip this post from this point…

I haven’t wanted to buy yarn much.

Oh, there has been the old moment I’ve felt a mild desire to buy some, usually for a particular project or another, and an odd little regret that I’m not supporting some of the yarn manufacturers whose yarn I like. But mostly the compulsion to buy yarn has been replaced by the desire to buy bookmaking and art supplies.

On the other hand, I haven’t stopped knitting. I’m still producing garments at a respectable rate. Finally getting to use some of the yarns in the stash has been great, and spurring me on to do more stash knitting. So has ‘making’ more space.

However, something is starting to happen that happened last time I had a big stash reduction: I’m getting down to the ‘difficult’ yarn. It’s the yarn that I bought to make something, but it turned out to be unsuitable. It’s the yarn I bought to make something, but then later snapped out of the delusion that I’d ever wear that thing. It’s the yarn I bought because it was beautiful or interesting, but can’t find a pattern for. It’s the yarn that made my hands hurt, or turned out to be a different colour when I got it or it saw it in sunlight, or didn’t hold up to machine washing as well as it should.

Or, as in the case of the yarns I used in the vest above, it’s the yarn I bought too little of to make anything. Except in this case, I had a one of those moments when re-sorting the stash when I realised that these three small batches of yarn went together really well, and I had just the right pattern for combining them.

The result? I absolutely, freakin’ love this vest. If only all of the difficult yarn in my stash would be so obliging.