2013 FO Round-up and a 2014 FO

In 2103, I finished 16 knitted, crocheted, and knotted projects. My conic sweater has no photo so it is not pictured below. I should remedy that.

I guess this is about my speed these days, since it’s almost exactly what I made last year. Although, some of these photos are of more than one thing. For example:

I made two bunnies and I organized, knit part of, and sewed up part of the blanket under the bunnies in this photo.

This photo is of two but I made five of these crocheted jar covers.

I only made one of these, but look how cool it looks with a color-changing LED candle in it…

I skipped calculating my stash total last year but here is this year’s: as of today I have 74,438 yards, or 42 miles of yarn. That is only (“only”) 3,000 more yards than at the end of 2011. I do have a confession that I went to ArtFibers for one last hurrah and came home with 700 yards of Tantra and about 340 yards of Ginko.

Aren’t they gorgeous? Lucky for my wallet they did not have sweater quantities of the yarn I wanted to use to make a sweater in a color that I thought would be good on me. Whew.

Moving on…

My most recent FO is not knitting but cross stitch.

I got the kit from Alicia Watkins on Etsy. It is so cute and was so much fun to do that I want to make all of her patterns now. I should mount this finished piece, frame it, and figure out where to put it before I do anything else, though.

Really, I should be knitting one of the projects on my needles. I might be time to cut my losses with a couple of projects and frog them. I have one sweater that I think is going to have to be totally rethought. At least the yarn won’t just sit in my stash that way.

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FO Round-up Addendum

When my friend Kristi read yesterday’s post she pointed out that the blanket bunny I made for her son was missing.

The photo never made it to my Flickr set. That’s what I get for forgetting to cross-check my Ravelry projects list. Another gift I knitted never made it to Flickr or here. Fitted mitts for my friend Christy’s daughter.

I intended to send them to her shortly after her daughter arrived from Colombia and only just sent them, so I was avoiding posting about them. I should have gotten Niels to model them, they are cuter on.

I didn’t look back at previous year’s fo counts yesterday either. In 2011 and 2010 there were 27, in 2009 there were 39, and in 2008 there were 51. This is a disturbing trend! So much for having more time for knitting now that my kids are older and in school all day, huh?

I thwarted the universe’s desire for me to not know how much yarn I have (by borrowing my husband’s computer) and figured out that I have
76867.2 yards of yarn or 43.7 miles. 5000 yards or 3 miles more than last year. Whoops. Maybe I won’t buy yarn this year? But really, maybe I will.

2012 FO Round-up

I only finished 15 17 knitted, crocheted or sewn objects this year, and none of them sweaters!

I’m noticing that only two of them are for me (the binary cable hat and the tapestry cowl) and I can’t find one of those two (the hat). Darn. I think that’s because I knit two shawl/scarf things that ended up being for other people (lintilla and annis) even though I thought they were going to be for me. Also, I have several sweaters on the needles for myself but none of them are getting finished.

The last two items pictured never got shown off here. I made bird ornaments for my children’s teachers.

And a cute (if I must say so myself) gingerbread house ornament for a friend.

I really like they way they all turned out. I wish I had set aside more time in December for sewing ornaments. Next year! (Maybe.)

I attempted to calculate the yardage of yarn currently in my stash but my spreadsheet program and Google docs both refused to read the file that Ravelry exports. I’m going to say that’s the universe telling me that I don’t need to know. I’m actually glad because 2012 was supposed to be my year of not buying yarn except at Stitches and I know I didn’t stick to that. Also, I didn’t finish many projects and no sweaters so that means not a lot of yarn leaving. Let’s just agree that I probably have too much yarn and leave it at that.

2011 FO Round-up

It is time for this year’s Finished Object Round-up. This year I finished 27 knitted, sewn, or woven objects. There are only 26 pictures because I didn’t get one of the second of the fuzzy blue bunnies and it has been absorbed into the vast quantity of stuffed animals in our house.

How depressing! And now for the even more depressing part: I calculate the amount of yarn in my stash and it is somehow up to 71,727 yards (or 40.75 miles)! That is almost three times what it was last January. That seems impossible to me somehow. I think I either miscalculated then or now. I’m not sure which. I calculated how much yarn I used (not counting the six projects I made with Karen’s yarn) and I come up with 5,714 yards used. That is less than previous years but that still doesn’t account for 50,000 yards of yarn!

I think that I’m going to stay in my cozy little denial corner and refuse to believe it. That and maybe I will drag out the yarn this week once the kids are back and school and try to assess. There must be some that can go! Yeesh.

NaBloPoMo Day 16: imaginary knitting and stash angst

I am struggling with my daily topics this year. I did knit today but it was more of that potholder and it’s STILL not finished! I am going to blame the two strands of yarn on a size 8 needle. That is some tight knitting. It’s necessary, I know, but not that fun to knit.

I was listening to Cast On on my walk today and she was talking about imaginary knitting. Then I listened to Stash and Burn where Nicole was interviewing Alana Dakos, who wrote a book with Hannah Fettig (stick with me here, I am going somewhere) who designed the Effortless Cardigan, which I have been meaning to knit for about a year. That go tme thinking about all of the sweater yarn in my stash and how I was determined to have a regular output of sweaters but I haven’t managed to finish one for months. I have the slinky ribs still on the needles, just waiting for sleeves.

Meanwhile, I have bought several sweater quantities of yarn. I think it might be time for a yarn fast. I probably should look closely at my stash and figure out my yarn mileage but the idea is too daunting to consider right now. I am pretty sure that my yarn accumulation has been in the positive direction. Right now my desk is cluttered with various balls of yarn, many of which have been given to me! So even when I’m not buying yarn, it’s coming in to my house. (A likely story, eh?)

Maybe 2012 will be my yarn fast year. I will have to think about the rules for my yarn fast, if any. I could just go back to my deal with Kristi, which now I’m unsure of. I think it was that I had to knit up 3 times the length of yarn I wanted to buy? I know it involved a spreadsheet and me owing her money if I broke the deal. I really just don’t need to buy, though, so maybe making too many rules is counter productive.

We’ll see. Watch this space for what I decide to do about my yarn in 2012, if anything.

defeated by yarn…

My de-cluttering blog post is very relevant to this blog today: defeated by yarn.

2010 FO Roundup

Happy New Year, everyone! A new year means that it’s time for me to look back and count my projects and yarn used. Yes, I’m weird, but that is what it means to me. Here’s this year’s mosaic of finished object photos.

There are only 27 projects in this year’s mosaic. I had 39 in 2009 and 51 in 2008! I am going to attribute my finished object count drop to there being fewer crocheted items, dishcloths and bunnies in each passing year. Also, this year’s count includes three sweaters knit for myself. Three! Then there are two kid sweaters that add up to almost as much yarn as I’d use for a sweater for me.

I went through my projects on Ravelry and added up yarn usage. This year, I used 9,712.5 yards, or about 5.5 miles of yarn. That is only 100 yards less than I used up last year. Somehow, though, my current stash total (from my Ravelry Excel export) is only 23,655.4 yards, or 13.4 miles of yarn. That is 20,000 yards, or just over 11 miles less than last time I posted a number. That was two years ago but when I calculated last year I said that the amount was approximately equal to the amount that came in. I know I bought yarn this year, in sweater quantities, so I don’t now that I’m really down so much. Maybe the Ravelry spreadsheet has changed?

Anyway, enough stash-navel-gazing! Here is my current project instead.

It’s Aidez, a new Berroco free pattern. It’s knit in super bulky yarn that I can’t use because of wool content so I’m knitting in Remix instead, because I was given that for my birthday and I’m excited to use it. I think the sweater will look great in it. Since I’m changing the gauge, I’m also changing the construction and am doing a bottom-up, seamless raglan. That’s why I’m knitting the sleeves first: so I can then knit the body and connect them all for the shoulder shaping.

Here’s another shot of the sleeve, with my arm in it, so you can get a better view of the stitch detailing.

The funny thing is, Juls brought me souvenir yarn from Tahoe because she saw it and thought of me. Guess what it was?

Yes! The same yarn I’m using for my sweater. It really is a nice yarn and the yardage per ball is great. This ball is a chocolatey brown color which didn’t come across in the picture at all. Oops. I’m thinking that it’s destined for a cowl for me.

She also gave me some leftover Summer Tweed.

I’ve been wanting to try this yarn but haven’t ever gotten around to it. I’m thinking this will be a gift scarf because the colors aren’t very me but I’m really looking forward to knitting it! Thanks again, Juls!

miles (and miles) of yarn

As a follow up to yesterday's post about my project count for 2009, I was inspired today by Lisa to calculate how many miles of yarn I used in 2009. I mentioned last year that I was hoping for my stash go down about 10,000 yards or 5 miles. The good news is that is about how much yarn I used (9825.5 yards, by my estimate, not counting yarn used on small crochet projects where I don't bother to weigh all the little pieces and/or use leftovers from other projects). The bad news is that my stash hasn't changed. So apparently I could use 10,000 yards of yarn in a year, but I could also buy that much.

I need to either knit faster (which hardly seems possible) buy less (which I honestly think I was doing) or get rid of some. Destashing time, I think!

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yarn storage

Kristan asked me about yarn storage:
As a non-knitter, I have become curious about all of this yarn. WHERE DO YOU KEEP IT? What organization system is maintained for that purpose? How do you keep the boys out of it?

I took a few pictures for you Kristan. After seeing how organized your house is, I'm hoping you'll still want to speak to me after you see my yarn storage. 😉

main yarn storage

This tower of bins in the corner of my living room is my main yarn storage. When I first started I had two of those blue bins on the bottom there, then I traded one of them for the larger clear bin on top of the blue one. Then my All Seasons Cotton stash required its own bin and I added that small clear one. That stash outgrew that bin and the clear bin with the blue lid is sweater quantities of yarn. The basket is supposed to be current projects but it's often where unfinishd or ignored projects go to marinate and think about what they've done to make me mad.

Sadly, it doesn't end there.

secondary yarn storage

I'm not sure now where I got the idea, but I decided that once I wasn't growing Kombucha anymore I could use the giant jar to store sock yarn. It's kept out of the dust, but I can still see it! Unforunately, it's not big enough, and that cardboard box has quite a bit of sock (and other) yarn also.

And yes, one more picture.

newly colonized yarn drawer

I recently colonized this drawer in the entertainment center for yarn storage. I just got tired of seeing baggies of yarn taunting me. The things that aren't covered by these pictures are the yarn I just got yesterday, it hasn't found homes yet, and the garbage bags full of Babba's acrylic which live in the storage by the carport and gets pulled out when I need yarn for school projects, or if someone I know needs some acrylic for something. If I keep trying to teach kids to finger knit, we'll get through eventually. I hope.

As far as how I keep the boys out of it, they just don't go after it. Stefan moves my knitting around if I leave my current project on the couch or something, but then again, so does Erik. Honestly, they aren't that interested. Niels will tell you that he's learning to knit, but he's really knit about three stitches.

I hope Kristan, and the rest of my intrepid blog readers, will still speak to me after this post!

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yarn swapping and sweater finishing

Purlescence had a yarn swap today and I made out like a bandit.

I also brought home one skein of yarn that I had to pay for: Blue Moon Fiber Arts Luscious silk in the sapphire colorway. I've been lusting after this yarn for a while and I have plan for it, so home it came. This photo doesn't do it justice, believe me.

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I had all the yarn out on the floor in the office (an advantage of cleaning up the office is that I can use the floor, even if it's just for poorly lit photo shoots). Stefan decided that all the yarn spread out looked like a garden and started arranging it and stuffing some of the balls into shoes. The ones he was stuffing into shoes are actually sock yarn. Smart kid, eh?

stefan arranged a garden of yarn, in his words

The last thing I brought home was two grocery bags full of sparkly, fluffy, shiny yarns for the kids in the Textiles class to use for weaving. Kids love sparkly, fluffy, shiny yarn for weaving. We found last time that the ribbon yarn works particularly well because it lays flat and makes the project faster and the stuff we had was variegated which gives the piece more interest for the kids. I think they'll love the stuff I got.

While I was waiting for the end of the swap (to collect the stuff for school) I finished sewing the hem of Niels' sweater. It's all finished except for the i-cord tie. I am not going to make the i-cord tie, though. I am going to go to JoAnn and buy some sort of cord for the tie. I don't see a point in knitting four feet of i-cord so that one foot of it shows. Also, it seems likely, as Anabel pointed out, that Niels will decide he needs a rope for something and pull it out. At least if I have store bought cord, I can go buy another. PIctures of the sweater will come later, after it has blocked and the recipient has recovered from his current flu-y illness and is in a sweater modelling mood.

I don't know how many yards of yarn I took over because some of it was old yarn from my grandmother and I didn't know how many yards it was. Not counting that yarn, and including a fluffy yarn I'm donating to the weaving projects, 2274 yards of yarn left my house today. Unfortunately, 3417 yards came in. That's a net gain of 1147 yards. I did put a few more balls of yarn into Niels' sweater but I thought my stash total would go up. I figured out why it dropped so much between my last two calculations: Ravelry changed the way they count your yarn so that if you put something in a project it subtracts it from the total in your stash. Even so, my total has dropped again and I'm not sure how. I now have 43867.3 yards or 24.93 of yarn that's down another 6 miles and over my goal for the year. That seems wrong somehow. I must be missing something. I'll figure it out eventually, I suppose. I'm still going to aim for using up 5 more miles of yarn this year, because I think I can! I already used up almost a mile in Niels' sweater.

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