Thursday, August 18, 2011

Yarn Diet

I am making a vow: no new yarn purchases until:
  • I have finished more projects
  • Used up more yarn
  • Used up all the acrylic I have lying around from forever ago
  • The yarn will once again fit into the designated bins and not in bags and boxes around my bedroom and closet.

I got a very full box from WEBS today that I had ordered at the end of last week, which had culminated in Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. That will be my LAST yarn purchase for a while. I'm going cold sheep.

I've unsubscribed from all yarn store newsletters. I will not go to WEBS, Knitpicks, Yarnia, etc. I will not purchase more yarn from my LYS.

  • I will continue going to my LYS for open stitch time as I get a tremendous amount of crocheting done during those hours.
  • I will shop my (very long) ravelry queue to remind myself of all the wonderful projects that I already have yarn stashed away for.
  • I will use up the miles of acrylic yarn I had bought on sale, cheap, before I discovered how much I loved luxury fibers. I'm too cheap to just give it away so it must be used.
  • I will take breaks from crocheting, because I've already had one RSI flare-up this month.

I'm making this public in the hopes it will keep my honest.

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Re-recycling

It's a bittersweet moment for me. I'm currently frogging my first ever garment I ever crocheted. It was the Baby-Doll Top from Mary Jane Hall's Crochet That Fits and I made it long before I figured out silly things like yarn weight and correct garment construction and seaming. So I made a pattern that called for fingering weight yarn with DK weight cotton yarn. Fast forward a year and some change later... and it's hanging funny. As in, one side's shoulder strap is shorter than the other, and so the entire bodice is lop-sided, and the cotton has stretched so it's kind of big on me.

So, frogged.

That's the bitter part.

The sweet part is that this shirt was also my first ever project I ever made with recycled yarn -- and that yarn was from my first ever recycled thrift store sweater, to boot. So lots of firsts wrapped up into this orange sparkly not-quite-right top. I feel like it's karmic balance that the shirt made with recycled yarn is being recycled yet again into something (though I'm not quite sure what, yet).

It's fiber samsara. I love it.