green

Recipient: Sojourn Services
Completed: October, 2006
Lion Brand Yarn / Homespun
98% Acrylic, 2% Polyester
Needles: US 10.5
Garter stitch

My guild engages in a variety of charity projects, the most recent of which involved knitting Las Vegas Scarves for the clients of Sojourn Services.

The rules for making a Las Vegas Scarf are as follows: Assign a number 1-6 to each of the six different balls of yarn. Roll one die to determine which yarn you use (1, 2, 3, 4, etc.) and roll the second die to determine how many rows of that color you knit. The colors come out semi-randomly, and you can end up with unexpected and interesting combinations.

So I went to my stash. There was a period of time a while back when I was not so good at doing gauge swatches and I purchased a holy sh*tload of Lion Brand’s Homespun to make a sweater, with which I grew disenchanted. It sat on my needles for several years, during which time I also made various other smaller Homespun projects (like this, and this, and this) (Oh, and this). Since I had the same yarn in least six different colors, in whole and partial skeins, I thought they might possibly be good candidates for this scarf. They weren’t necessarily colors I’d bring together, but since they were all the same texture it might work.

I confess, I didn’t leave the selection of yarn/number of rows entirely to fate. There were a couple times when I seriously doubted fate’s sense of aesthetics. But overall I was pleasantly surprised at how well this smash-up of colors ended up working together. I never would have consciously chosen this palate, so there’s a lesson there.

One more thing about this project: this was the first time I knit a scarf lengthwise, and I gotta tell you, it sucks. Each row is 300 stitches long, and it takes for-freaking-ever to finish. I like the effect, but it’s psychologically draining to knit for a half hour only to finish two rows. It might make a good pub-knitting project, however

I am on a mission. A mission to reduce my stash.

Relatively speaking, I don’t currently have a problem (yet). I don’t have an entire closet / room / garage devoted to yarn storage; I don’t stow skeins in empty luggage / the freezer / under the bed / in the sleeves of winter coats; I don’t lie about how much yarn I buy or hide my yarn from Ted; and I do think I could (probably) knit all the yarn I currently have before I die (and yes, I do know–either personally or electronically–knitters who have copped to all of the above).

That said, I realize that I am in a rather precarious position. I know I have the hoarding gene. I hate to throw out “perfectly good X” and there’s always some new fiber out there, full of promise and potential…

And I’m kind of a pokey knitter. In the time some of my knitting friends finish knitting, seaming, and blocking several sweaters, I plod my way through a single sock. When you’re spending months with the same project, the same yarn–well, let’s just say it’s easy to get side-tracked.

It’s clear that my stash reduction will take discipline. A commitment to shedding those extra skeins. But really, what it comes down to is: I need to knit more. There. That doesn’t sound so bad now, does it?