adding to the stash

I actually have a fairly small stash of yarn, though if you were to ask my boyfriend he’d have something different to say. I haven’t forced him to sit and look at bloggers’ photos of their stashes as a comparison, but trust me: I don’t have a ton of yarn that was purchased with no project in mind. For the most part, I decide on a project and buy the yarn. So I have lots of leftover bits, but never enough to make an entire something.

Until a week and a half ago, when I was inspired to buy some sock yarn “just because.” Just because it was so reasonably priced. Just because the colors were so pretty. Just because I could.

Two skeins of Sock! Merino from Lisa Souza yarns. On the left we have the color “pumpkin” (which is a lot more brown than orange, even in real life) and on the right we have “peacock” (which is a perfect name for this color). The ordering and getting of these skeins was a bit of a comedy of errors—I ordered them both and they arrived a few days later. I was psyched to have gotten them so fast. But then I looked at them more closely, and they didn’t have that yummy “pebbled” look. The labels said they were plain old Sock! yarn, not the merino version. I checked my confirmation email: I had ordered the merino. But she had charged me for the nonmerino. I emailed her to ask about it, and she quickly apologized, put two skeins of merino in the mail with a return envelope, and told me she’d just charge me the additional $4. No problem. In the interest of not making her worry that I was going to keep all the yarn, I even walked up to work on a day off so I could turn it around quickly. All good. Next week I get an email from Lisa, that she forgot about the details of our exchange and credited my account entirely for the cost of the Sock (meaning I hadn’t paid anything at all!). She realized the error and recharged me the amount. It’s all come out correctly, but it was kind of funny how many steps it took. What’s most amazing is that within one week it was all resolved—even if I had ordered the yarn with a specific project in mind, the wait was totally minimal. I’ve played a bit with the Peacock, on my new KnitPicks circular needles (!), and have enjoyed it. I’m designing a new pair of socks to use with that yarn. There’s 560 yards of yarn in each skein, so there’s more than enough for a nice long pair of socks.

The other yarn I bought for a very specific reason: EH’s baby. The baby is due August 24 (my dad’s birthday!). Unfortunately, I’ll be down the shore with family at the time of the shower, so I asked EH’s sister if I could mail my gift to her. Which means: Must. Finish. Sweater. In less than 2 weeks. I can do it, that’s a reasonable timeframe, but I decided to make this pattern up, too, so I’m kind of knitting without a safety net. The only glimpse of this I will give to you is the yarn. Checkit: PURPLE!

So if I finish this piece before the end of July I’ll have officially knit something purple during the purple month of Project Spectrum. Only, if it comes out well I’m going to be submitting this design to someone, so you won’t see it for a while. We’ll see though!