Failure

Back in April, I was wondering, if I should do a Stashbusting year or not...

I pretty quickly realized, that I cannot do that for fabric, but then, how about for yarn? 

I failed that one too. 

I was pretty good until about a month ago, I only bought two 50 gramms ball of sockyarn, which I immediately cast on, and though it took me a fairly long time, I finished. Then admittedly, I've knitted fairly little, as I turned to other crafts, embroidering, lacemaking, etc, and then there was the summer form hell, when I could only concentrate on surviving. 

Still, I have not bought yarn, while I finished the new year's sweater, cast on for a sweater from DROPS's Soft Tweed, that, by now, only missing the bottom half of its body, knitted a few historical knee high stocking, planned out sweaters with stripes and stranded patterns to use up more of that gigantic sock yarn stash.

And then I had to go to a store literally next door where my favorite second hand yarn store is. Up until that day, I managed to avoid even the area, but I had no choice. You guessed it right. I went in and failed my reserve miserably. Found some yarns, that were screaming to come home with me. 

One skein is missing from the picture, because I immediately cast on a cardigan, I planned for years, and I am using that as a contrast/pattern color. 

And then I had to go to that part of the city again... Oops. 

Looking at the yarns I bought lately (meaning as a souvenir yarn from the Netherlands last fall) I am kind of into the green/blue thing.

Though, that green would go well to another ball: 

The lighter purple would be a cool contrast/pattern color for something stranded...

Or that purple would be good as a toe/heel/cuff color for this other skein:

The three skein of brown will be a knee high stocking the gray is always a good base, and then, here is this one. 

Look closer. Yes, it IS a sock yarn, but it is shiny. There is one strand of shiny purplish color in it.

I would not use it for socks, obviously, but then, what for? 

A striped shawl comes to mind, or a cardigan, with a striped yoke/raglan shoulder, in both case I would probably use a pearly gray sock yarn...or a kidsilk type of yarn as a base.

What do you think? Any ideas? Suggestions? Not just for the shiny sock-íarn, but for the others?

And still more leftovers - stripy mittens

 As I said in my last post, I still had some leftover from the yarn, and one could have never enough mittens. 

I am especially fond of those "fingerless" mittens that are actually half-fingered ones. I've knitted a bunch of them in the last two decade. I still have most of them... They are great up until about -3-5 C°ging about the city, you don't have to constantly take them off, when you need to take out your keys/change/passes/ID etc.

But there is one I've knitted more than a dozen years ago, then about 8 years ago I lost them. I loved them dearly, don't ask me why it was different than any other one I have, they were knitted in the orange and brown colors I preferred whan I had red hair, both colors were leftover sock-yarns I picked up in second hand stores. Their dissapearance is still a mistery, as there is so little time and space between my last memory of them, and the point where I noticed them missing, I could never really figure out what could have happened. 

That was one of the first time I've used a self-striping yarn as contrast color, and the narrower stripes only on the ring fingers along with a long, ribbed cuff made them special for me. Anybody who saw them loved them, and everybody said, they are so ME. And who knows why, I never knitted mittens that were so "me" ever since. 

Until I had those leftover leftover bits of yarns.

Since I've knitted those brown and orange mittens, my coloring, and the colors I wear changed.

Back then I had flaming orange hair, and I were a lot of rusty orange. Ten years ago, I grew out my silver hair, and, now I kind of look like a three day old corpse in oranges, so  I wear cooler colors, like blues, turqoises combined with gray instead of browns. 

For knitting, they are top down mittens, meaning I've knitted the fingers first, and then as they were put together, I added the thumb, and then could go as long with the cuffs as my yarn would let me, so there would be as little leftover as possible. Here is a gif from the process. back then, when the Barka yarnstore was still a thing, there was a tutorial and pattern on their site on how to make these, but that site is down for a long time now. Maybe I will make another one in the future for this blog. Would you like that? 

I think I love these almost as much as those orange striped ones.

Do you have pieces of clothings you loved so much that you have them for many years even decades?

Do you have pieces you loved so much you've tried to recreate? If yes, do you love the new ones as much as you did the old one? 

(Yarn Drops Flora and handdyed sock yarn, 

Photos: Norbert Varga @Bodeszphoto )

...and the leftovers - Love in a Mist hat and mittens

 Let's play catch up, shall we? 

While I still held myself to my self imposed no-yarnbuying and stashbusting idea, there is nothing against using leftovers, is there? 

Remember the Love-in-a-mist sweater I knitted at the end of last year and posted about this February? 

In that post I showed the base yarn I overdyed to have more interesting colorvariations, and I might even mentioned that there vere plenty of letovers...

I loved the sweater (and the yarn/color-combo) that I wanted to use up all the leftovers... I have made a small wrap cardigan, we still have not managed to photo, and there were still more leftovers, so I decided to make a hat, and since this seemed to be a yarn forever giving even a pair of fingerless mittens. 

For the hat, I used my basic beret formula, starting with a 120 stitch and K1/P2 ribbing and then Increase the stitches to 144 stitches, and knitting six repeats of the pattern horizontally, and -depending how I count it- 2 or three repeat vertically.

Meaning that the first and the last repeat is not the full repeat, but a simpler, smaller version of the motif, and the two repeats of the full pattern means actually three motifs above each fiagonally. After the last one I inprovised a starry middle section. 

Blocked it over a plate, but looking at the pictures I might have to reblock it on something bigger to have it a bit slouchier.

Yarn is the same DROPS Flora I used for the sweater and the leftovers from the handdyed sock yarn.

I will come with the details of the mittens in a couple of days. Stay tuned. 

Photoes: Norbert Varga @Bodeszphoto