April 1 is Flash your Stash Day.

My stash is out of control. I am quite good at acquiring yarns faster than I can knit them. There's easily a year's worth of knitting here. Though as long as the stash is organized and made up of yarns I want to knit with, it doesn't bother me. The stash is a preventative measure against runnning out and purchasing yarn for the next great thing. Every so often I go through and send yarns to SQ, a happy arrangement for both her and the stash.

The main yarn storage is this cabinet. This is a vintage-ish metal cabinet with glass doors that I purchased from a store in Williamsburg for $10 and painted blue to match my room. Karen and I lugged it back to my apartment. It was seriously heavy.

There's yarn for several sweaters, including Felted Tweed for Salina, Cathay for the Tivoli top, Alpaca/silk for the somewhat cowl, a sweater's worth of Prime alpaca, the recent unraveled yarns, and more. The yarns in this cabinet generally have projects.

The top shelf has boxes for sock yarns, circular needles and crafty supplies. A close-up on the sock yarns:

Secondary yarn storage is under my bed. There's a box and a bag.

The box primarily contains single skeins of worsted-weight yarn from other projects. There's Harisville Tweed on the top, a ball of Frog Tree alpaca, Cash Iroha, Peace Fleece, Karabella and Habu mohair.

There's some white cotton, brownish mystery wool/silk, blue mohair and sock yarn leftovers in this bag. This yarn should probably go to eBay.

Finally, works in progress go in this lidded basket. This seemed like a good idea, to put projects in their own spot, but its more like "out of sight, out of mind". The projects in here are often forgotten. Currently in the basket are the Argyle Vest, a yet-unmentioned turtleneck shrug redux, and alpaca mittens.

And that's the stash for 2006! This review has got me thinking it needs some more organizing.. I admire Jess' pared-down stash. Maybe I'll limit the yarns to what fits in the blue cabinet. perhaps, perhaps.

After photographing the stash yesterday, I started to get annoyed with yarns I've had for a long time and are still unused. Like the kool-aid dyed self-striping yarn I made last year. What was I thinking? Do I even like these colors? Seriously, its store bought yarn from now on. I took out the two skeins and set them aside.

Before long, I came to admire the colors again. The purple/pink/red yarn could be great for my sockapaloooza pal.

And the green/orange combination is actually quite inspired. It would make fun tall socks.

The subtle variation in the green is nice. yeah, its the same color green that I always end up with, yet it continues to charm. I wish the Knit Picks color your own sock yarn was superwash, but on the plus side, it is speedy to knit.

Even though they look all crumply and strange, these are my best-fitting socks.

The Specs:

Pattern: Gentleman's Fancy Socks from
Yarn: Lang Jawoll, 2 skeins in color #0164
Needles: Size 0 Addi, 40 inch for the magic loop
Modifications: skipped the 6 even rows before the toe shaping.

The yarn was a good match for the pattern. It used nearly all of the two skeins. I think Jawoll might be a good match for a number of patterns in Knitting Vintage Socks that call for skinny socks yarn. Size 0 needles are small though! these felt like they took forever. can you imagine the original vintage patterns that used even skinnier yarns?

So here's the modeled Sweater with Wide Collar.. it is mostly seamed but (obviously) no sleeves yet.

Its the size small, followed the directions exactly as written in Rebecca. I didn't do any sort of calculations, so any non-fitting is my own fault.

I can't decide what I think about it. Its not the most fitted sweater ever, but maybe this is okay. There is the whole sweater with volume thing going on. And perhaps it will be better with sleeves?

The specs:

Yarn: Knitpicks Color your own sock yarn, 1 skein, plus 10 grams. dyed with kool aid many months ago.
Pattern: my own basic knee sock pattern.
Needles: size 1 40-inch circular needle, for magic loop.

I was surprised with how fast these knit up. I even successfully practiced knitting while reading with them, because they are stockinette. who knew, knitting while reading actually works. This alone is a good reason to knit stockinette things!

The calf increases are my favorite part. They are worked in sets of two, and each pair of increases is worked on the outside of previous increases, so they get more spread out as the socks get taller.

Originally, I was just going to keep knitting until the skein ran out. Then I realized that I had leftover yarn from the cascading leaves socks. Apparently my skill lies in consistently dyeing nearly the same shade of green, because it matched. So I knit as far as the striped skein would go, then switched to solid green for the ribbing. This really helped give the socks needed extra length. They would have tended to fall down if they ended mid-calf.

Read on for the pattern.

All day yesterday I wore these socks that kept falling down. I think this must have inspired a recent elastification of knit goods...

The first victim was a finished sockpal sock.

The sock is a 3x1 rib throughout, then about 1 inch at the cuff is 1x1 rib, worked in solid red yarn. It took like 4 tries to bind off this sock.. I used the tubular cast-off, but it kept turning out not quite right. Then, it seemed like they'd get out of shape very quickly, so added some elastic.

The elastic is actually sold as jewlery cord. Its quasi-clear, and stretchy. I threaded it through one side of every knit stitch. And it does help! Its not too tight... just enough to keep the cuff in shape. If its totally annoying for my sockpal, the elastic is removable.

Then, I figured my knee socks could use the same treatment. They are totally not falling down.

Finally, and the reason I bought the elastic in the first place, my legwarmers. These are one of favorite knit projects, but the only time I tried to wear them, they fell down before I even got to the subway. Shouldn't happen now that they are elastified!

Sockpal socks are complete! thank god. These were my primary project for the past week and a half, and I am very happy to have them done.

Details:
Yarn: Knitpicks color your own, dyed with kool aid.
Pattern: 68 stitches, 3x1 rib on instep and leg. Turkish cast on for toe, short row heel.
Needles: size 1 40" circ
Stripes: 10 red stripes from toe to heel (not including the bit of red starting the toe); 10 purple stripes from heel to cuff.

Since December, I've knit a number of pairs of socks with knitpicks color your own sock yarn.
1. Red Elfine socks for my aunt
2. Stripey stockinette socks for my mom
3. Cascading leaves socks in green
4. The green and orange knee socks
5. These sock pal socks

No wonder I need to a break from it!

For the elastic, I worked 3 rows, then knotted the two ends and wove them in. its quite likely that there is a better way to do this.. but this method works.

Sockpal, I hope you like these!