Scrapdash

Lightening the load

2017-01-19T11:29:00.000-06:00

I began this blog as a digital version of show-n-tell, in the spirit of those structured fun times during elementary school when all the classroom kids gathered together and shared something cool, weird, or otherwise meaningful to the one standing in front of the others. Everyone took their turn. On a blog, it's always the blogger's turn; it's just that the cool, weird, or special things being shared wait around on the blog until someone discovers them.

On Scrapdash, I lumped all the parts of my life I wanted to share because it was a convenient place. I'm most interested in cooking and a couple forms of crafts (sewing and knitting), but one or two, more in-depth monologs have found themselves here as well. The last few years have been about thinning down The Stuff. Yarn, mostly, and that effort will continue because there are miles to go yet. Yeah. Literally, I guess, measured in marathons.

Along the way, my interests divided from the one path into two by, oddly enough, my sewing and knitting combining into the creation of project bags I have sold to local knitters and crocheters for about five years now. Because I sold them locally and not also online, I never got around to talking about them here on the blog. While the paths had divided into personal and professional, they ran parallel and close together.

Now, however, I'm working my way toward selling my wares on the interwebs. It's a slowish process for me because I do everything like I'm wearing velcro shoes on AstroTurf, but it's forward motion nonetheless. As a result, I am moving my future knitting-related and probably sewing/quilting-related chitchat onto my business' blog Jennamay made. For anything else I might have to say, I will keep it under the Scrapdash header, but I'm posting all that wisdom and know-how to a new Scrapdash address. Both blogs are on Wordpress, a place I'm hoping will help me streamline how I have to say what I say.

I have no plans to take down the content here on the original Scrapdash blog. Only the new stuff will appear at the new places. On Jennamay made, I'm revealing the yarn I'm giving up to make up for the Deep Stash Half Marathon's yardage deficit. I'm also starting the new Stash Marathon there. Disasters in the kitchen that manage to be tasty anyhow will show up in the new Scrapdash site. I may post more reflective stuff there, too, including book reviews (because I can't get away from grade school exercises, apparently).

I'm also not migrating the followers list and email notifications list from here. I don't know if that's possible, anyway, so this is an opportunity for current followers to lighten their loads if they decide not to opt-in to notifications on the new sites. You're welcome. Whether or not you follow me to the new blogs, thank you for being curious about my shenanigans this far. In all the antics on the internet, I'm grateful you have stopped by to turn an eye toward mine.

Hip to be Squares

2017-01-06T16:46:00.002-06:00

So scrap yarn blankets have been all the rage for a few news cycles now, but I had started one years before I knew to be cool. It's made of tessellating fish, and this wee, single fishy is the only one I got done during the Deep Stash Half Marathon.

It's made of the last tiny bit of the heathered, dark red Berocco Comfort from which I made the NICU baby hats in the last post.

Sock yarn scrap blankets seem to be the most popular weight of cuddle-wear just now. I went ahead and started a blanket in this yarn weight, too, but instead of going for the mitered square pattern that spread faster than a stadium wave, I decided to weave my blanket squares into being.

Each square is four-by-four inches and was woven double-stranded on a Zoom Loom, a modern version of a pin loom, made by Schacht Spindle Company. Both sets of these squares are made from the leftovers of the socks I mentioned in the last post. It takes about 15 grams of fingering weight yarn to make four squares, and each set of four will be coupled in my blanket with another set of four as well as a single square in a different color to go in the middle of nine-patch blocks. I started out as a quilter, after all, and a nine-patch block blanket is a pretty basic, beautiful layout.

Now, the final object that counts toward my DS Half Marathon yardage is a square that is not for a scrap blanket. In fact, I think the term "square" is too demeaning. It is a block, dear ones. A Block, and not one meant for a mere blanket but for an afghan. That is, the Great American Aran Afghan. (And lest you think I'm getting all pompous up in here, I usually refer to this long-term project by its street name GAAA.)

I started my GAAA back in 2013 with Berocco Comfort yarn I bought in 2009. I add to my collection of blocks slowly. This one, designed by Ginger Smith, is the sixth of how many I know not will be needed. I simply cast on one when I get the yen.

Now, yardage of all these individual blanket/afghan parts count toward the yardage total despite the fact the blankets/afghan aren't done because once the yardage is in that fish, square, or block, it is not coming back into the stash. It's out. Forever. Even if the larger project is never completed, that yardage has been cast out of the nest to make a life for itself in the cold, hard world.

So, drumroll, please...in your imagination...

Yardage for this post:
Fish: 14.7
Zoom Loom squares: 132.6
GAAA block: 142.8

Deep Stash Half Marathon 2016 update:

Total yardage from this post: 290.1
DSHM current yardage total: 13,470.1 (7.7 miles, rounded up)
DSHM yardage remaining: 9,602.4 (5.5 miles, rounded up)

So! I did NOT finish my Half Marathon challenge by the end of 2016. Surprise, surprise. I did at least manage to purge a little more than a quarter marathon. This means I will need to surgically remove almost ten thousand yards of yarn from the Deep Stash, in order to honor the terms of the challenge to myself. This I will do. I will! In an upcoming post. Stay tuned for that and for an announcement of my plans for 2017.

Head to Toe

2017-01-04T16:17:00.000-06:00

Or, in this case, toe up. That is, I'm starting with the Half Marathon projects for the feet.

My first dive into Deep Stash back in July was when I cast on for the Twists and Turns socks with Cascade Yarns Cherub Collection 4 Ply, in green. This pattern by Adrienne Fong was the first sock for the 2016 Tour de Sock Competition. The entry fee for Tour de Sock is used to benefit Doctors without Borders, and the competition coincides with the Tour de France bicycle race. There were a handful of other sock patterns one's entry fee bought, but Twists and Turns is the only one I made. I think that's because I got a little burnt out on socks, having made several over the prior year. I didn't pick up my skinny needles for another pair until December.

For several years, my husband and I have exchanged stockings as our way of giving each other Christmast gifts. Among the goodies in my stocking, I always get a tin of Altoids. For the last two or three years, he's gotten a bar of some luxurious shaving soap from me. This year, he got a pair of handmade socks, too.

This is the first pair of socks I intentionally made for him. He got the first two pairs because I knitted the feet of them just a touch too long for me, but just right for him. Turns out, he likes colorful socks (one of the pairs I messed up is orange). So, I dug out two skeins of Regia Cotton Color in the creative colorway name 5433 and worked up Ann Budd's On Your Toes pattern, a toe-up and ribbed sock. He wore them just after the appropriate length of time admiring them on Christmas morning. This man is knit-worthy.

Case in point: His brand-spanking-new Felted Clogs.

For his birthday this winter, I finished the slippers I had started for him in honor of our wedding anniversary over a year and a half ago. I can't remember if we'd replaced our old washer by then, but I know when the time came to replace it, I tried to pick out a model from the modern generation of top-loaders (all sans a central agitator) that might still be able to felt a willing wool.

As you can see, the clogs felted down, but it took all. night. long. The yarn I used, Patons North American Classic Wool Merino, is a tried-and-true felting wool for me. But, even with a full load of sheets, then blankets, then quilts, those suckers shrank slowly. I lost track of the loads of water that had to go through a full cycle of washing before I could start another load all over again. My old washer, before it quit, could be stopped mid-cycle and restarted at the beginning without pumping out all its water. Change in technology is not always an advancement.

Anyway, the rest of the projects, for the top of the human body, are for babies--newborns who are either going home right away or in the hospital for a longer stay and in need of some cute warmth.

These and the purple hats below were made from Morgen Stamate's LCD Basic Hat Free pattern. The heathered red hats above are knit from a remnant of Berroco Comfort, and the purple hats are from remanents of Caron Simply Soft.

These are my first pom-poms, thanks to the Clover pom-pom makers. The purple hats went to Kansas Children's Service League, for their Period of Purple Crying hat drive. This program distributes purple baby hats as a visual reminder to parents of newborns that they should not take out their frustrations on their baby during its sustained bouts of crying.

This baby Citrus Hat is made of Serenity leftovers from my Saqa sweater. It and the red hats above went to a local hospital's NICU.

And now for the yardage tallies:

Twists and Turns socks: 297.6
On Your Toes socks: 298.7
Felted Clogs: 666.9
Red baby hats: 065.1
Purple baby hats: 272.4
Baby Citrus Hat: 067.0

Deep Stash Half Marathon 2016 update:

Total yardage from this post: 1,667.7
DSHM current yardage total: 13,180
DSHM yardage remaining: 9,892.5

Sweater quantities, part 2. Saqa

2016-12-30T21:57:00.000-06:00

For National Knit a Sweater Month (NaKniSweMo) in November, I dug through my pattern books and found this Jane Ellison design. It's meant to be a blanket sweater for more slender figures, and when it's laid out on the floor, it's easy to see why.

I choose Saqa because it's boxy, comfy, easy, and eats a lot of yarn. In this case, a lot of Premier Yarns Serenity Worsted Weight--also known as "the Deborah Norville yarn"--I purchased in 2009 (only a day or two after Mariella's Knit Picks Palette, in geologic time).

Even with so much going for the pattern, the sweater took me every day of November to finish it on by the end of the month. After the knitting, there was the seaming. Fortunately, since I slipped the first stitch of every row, seaming with the mattress stitch didn't take a lot of concentration, either.

I'm impressed with how well the neckline turned out. I haven't picked up stitches for a neckline in an age (again, geologic time), and I twisted the picked up stitches like I do in socks so as to tighten them up. (Thank you, Jen H., for teaching me that trick.)

Another glorious feature of this simple sweater is that there is no dedicated front or back. I can just throw on the thing and not think about checking which side is which. I've been wearing the heck out of it this last month, too. It's just so squishy, I can't stand it! A knitting friend bought yarn for one of her own when she saw Saqa in person, and she even went hunting online for the out-of-print booklet by Miski. Saqa recommends itself, apparently.

Deep Stash Half Marathon 2016 update:

Saqa yardage: 1,824.7
DSHM current yardage total: 11.512.3
DSHM yardage remaining: 11,560.2

Sweater quantity, part 1. Mariella

2016-12-30T11:41:00.001-06:00

Today is a double-header posting here in the Scrapdash blogdom because I'm going to be showing you the sweater quantities of yarn that left Deep Stash since July.

First up, the Mariella cardigan made from ancient yarn picked up during the Mesozoic era (2008 AD). Yes, Knit Picks Palette was around then, in Rainforest Heather. Apropos.

And nigh, an epoch or so later, a human appeared whose forethought in the sweltering temperatures of the middle plains made preparations for the coming autumn...when temperatures are only slightly less sweltering because summer just doesn't know how to let go around here.

I took a class from a friend, the fabulous Chauntel of Firebrunette Knits, because there are a few bits and bobs in this pattern I would need help with, especially the part where I added sleeves one size larger than what I made the body. Oh, and I shortened the sleeves--see the aforementioned complaint about stubborn Kansas summers.

The great thing about this class was Chauntel taught us how to make this cardigan reversible. The neckband already sports a reversible cable design, and Chauntel helped us graft the top of the band and seam the part of it that rests against the back of the neck in invisible ways so the cardigan can be worn knit side or purl side out. Brilliant. With her permission, I'm sharing my progress pictures of the grafting method which can be found as Option 1 on Techknitter's blog.

Since the neck band is ribbed, I separated every other stitch at the top of the band onto four different needles/stitch holders so I could graft first one set of knits to knits and then the other set. It's not perfectly invisible, but there sure isn't a seam bump on one side, and both sides look the same.

One problem I encountered was moth damage to my yarn. The yarn has been in the stash a long time, folks, and I have been battling cloth moths for the last year or so. I sanitized my stash using mostly the freezer method found here, and everything is now in plastic bags. However, the damage was done already to this yarn, and I had to deal with it. Those pesky moth larvae neatly cut through fibers, so I had a lot of ends to weave in.

But once I was done with all that, I ended up with a sweater that actually fits me. The first time ever. I am seriously happy. Thanks, Chauntel!

Deep Stash Half Marathon 2016 update:

Mariella yardage: 1,538.5
DSHM current yardage total: 9,687.6
DSHM yardage remaining: 13,384.9

Deep Stash destashed

2016-12-12T11:00:00.000-06:00

Deep Stash Half Marathon 2016 update:

Destashed yardage: 7,768.2
DSHM current yardage total: 8,149.1
DSHM yardage remaining: 14,923.4

If you want to know which yarns I have freed from my Craft Grotto and sent back into the world, read on. If not, now you have time to read something truly useful.

As you can see above, I have released over 7700 yards of yarn so far during this half marathon. This is yarn I didn't work into a project. Sold or given away, it is now out of my house. I'm glad to say I didn't have to throw any of it into the trash.

I don't have much time left in the year to winnow out more yarn, and I'm sure I will have to give up additional scads to meet the gap to 23,072.5 yards that my projects don't cover. And I do have projects to write about. Sweaters, y'all. A few hats. A couple pairs of socks.

And then the gap. Oh, the gap.

So, some lucky soul at the DAV or Goodwill or some knitta friend(s) still will find stringy treasure they may or may not appreciate.

Like how some of this already destashed yarn was tough for me to appreciate, apparently. Unger Fluffy? What was I thinking? I bought it because it was in a bargain bin, unwanted, like a basket of burgundy Persian cats I didn't have the cold heart to turn away. I never did anything with it, though, or the lonely skein of Paton's Divine that is a cousin to the Tribble. Both found homes this year, however, and I'm glad to have adopted them to better places.

The lace and the sock yarn were a little tough for me to let go. I've used Sockotta at least twice before, and I love the colorways, but it's hard on my hands. So, it left with my blessing. Misti Alpaca Lace is a joy, but Christmas elbowed me into passing that delight on to another.

I'm not going to list all the departed yarn, complete with individual yardage counts, because I'm trying to preserve some respect for our time, but here they all are in a neat-o keen mosaic.

Honestly, I can't even tell any of this stuff is gone from the Grotto. I smell another variation of the marathon in the works for next year.

Fitzgerald Scarf

2016-08-21T16:04:00.002-05:00

Deep Stash Half Marathon 2016 update:

Fitzgerald Scarf yardage: 380.9
DSHM current yardage total: 380.9
DSHM yardage remaining: 22,691.6

I have more yardage to add from a pair of socks and some sold/given away destashing, but I'll post that later.

Ravelry Stats on my Fitzgerald Scarf project page.

The Fitzgerald ticked a few boxes for me. Besides yardage for the half marathon, it's my donation to this year's Red Scarf Project campaign and my challenge during the Olympics while playing Ravelry.com's Ravellenics Games. Both events need some explanation, I suppose.

Briefly, then...

The Red Scarf Project is part of a care package program for college students run by Foster Care to Success, America's College Fund for Foster Youth. For the last several years, FC2S has included a red scarf in its Valentine's Day care packages sent to students who have aged out of the foster-care system. I read about the program through the Now Norma Knits blog and have been making annual knitted contributions for the last six years. If you're interested in making a red scarf for some chilly student, please read the guidelines.

The Ravellenic Games run concurrent to the Olympics and are an opportunity for fiber enthusiasts around the world to knit, crochet, spin, and weave on challenging projects as a celebration of the athletes from around the world doing the amazing things they do. Much like the Olympics, the Ravellenics have events (Scarf Hockey, Afghan Marathon, Sock-Put) for which feats of astounding crafting are attempted. Finished lines are crossed, virtual medals and laurels are awarded to all participants with completed projects, and warm fuzzies are felt. It's been a fun way to sit and watch the games in Rio.

That said, this scarf nearly did me in. Not because it's hard. It is not. It is, in fact, addictive. But I started it halfway through the Olympics and had never finished a scarf of this magnitude (6 inches by 75.5 inches) in less than ten days. This one took me seven, plus one day to block. Rows flew by, but there were oh-so-many! Two rows in each repeat require a couple stitches for every eleven to be completely off the needles, flapping in the air conditioning. While you'd think that might be nerve-racking, it's not. Those stitches stay put like good little kiddos until you need them again.

I had thought I would like to make a blanket with this pattern. However, the fabric this stitch creates rolls horribly. I blocked the dickens out of the scarf, but it still wants to roll in on itself when handled and not sitting still for photos. Don't know if a lap full of this pattern would behave the same way, but I'm not eager to find out now.

The scarf before blocking, but it rolls up after blocking, too.

Anyway, here's to the first scant quarter mile in the half marathon. Onward!

Deep Stash Yadda Yadda

2016-06-29T11:10:00.001-05:00

So, the DS marathon isn't going anywhere, as is evidenced by the scads of blog entries I haven't posted about it. I also haven't been keeping track of the yardage faithfully (and there is a little some to keep track of), so the idea of going through the backlog to count it all is just a bad one. It's not gonna happen.

I maintain that the marathon is a good idea, I've just been going about it too casually. A marathon is a race, after all, and I haven't been acting even like a tortoise in a race. It's time to introduce the game into this game and set some real goals and real consequences.

[Insert ominous music here.]

And knock down the yardage miles a bit to, say, a half marathon.

Beginning July 1, I'm running my first ever Deep Stash Half Marathon. I have until the end of the year to work through 23,072.5 yards of deep stash yarn (13.1 miles) or else I must sell/give away/toss the difference of what I don't use in projects. Either way, I will be rid of just over 23K yards of yarn. Gone. Outta here. Boom. The sad consequence will be that some of it I won't get to use myself; it'll just be yarn echoes in the corners of my mind.

[Insert Debbie Downer sound effect]

And there are rules! As follows:

Deep Stash is yarn that has spent five years or more in the stash (added in 2011 or earlier).

Only yarn taken from Deep Stash counts toward the DSHM2016 goal total, not from more recent stash.

Yarns can be held in multiple strands while working them into a project, and the individual yardage of each strand will count toward the goal total. Because yardage that is gone, is GONE.

All projects finished by December 31, 2016 (using DS) will count. They do not have to be started after July 1, 2016.

The goal total that isn't met by completed projects will be met as well by destashing methods (sell, give, toss) from Deep Stash.

Deep Stash destashing may occur at any time during the half marathon, not just as its end, and count toward the goal total.

So, how much do I have to work into projects to avoid the dreaded DESTASH decisions?

23,072.5 yards = 3,845 yards/month = 961 yards/week = 192 yards/day (for a five-day week).

Right. Knitting almost 200 yards a day isn't setting myself up for failure. Nope.

Yeah, I know it is, but the challenge of the race here is the difficulty. I'm simply trying to work as much yardage through my fingers before I have to destash the rest, unused.

I intend to report yardage totals as I complete each project. So, the blog entries may come sporadically, but I hope there will be several between now and the end of the year.

Now, if anyone wants to join me, great. But, this isn't one of those decreasing-stash-alongs where there will be prizes. Therefore, there will be no rule nannies to keep anyone in line. If you want to use my rules for your race, fine. If you want to expand the rules to your entire stash, great! It's just that, I know my deep stash alone is still at least 138K yards (78 miles), so I've got a few half to full marathons in front of me before I've whittled it down to a more comfortable level.

So, okay then. Get ready, get set...

Green Deep Stash

2015-11-02T16:26:00.003-06:00

Deep Stash Departure Yardage
Since last tally:	2,756	1.57 miles
Current Total:	3,182	1.81 miles

It started with yoga socks.

Actually, it started with decrepitude in my knees, officially diagnosed as oseoarthritis. To strengthen the joints, I took up yoga this summer, and THAT prompted me to knit yoga socks. For which, I dove into the deep stash and whipped up this unispiring yet serviceable pair.

YOGA SOCKS

Yarn: Unlabeled green acrylic
Yards: 103.2

Tubes with holes for ankles, toes, and heels. So, stirrup pants without the pants part. Remember stirrup pants, Gen Xers? A '90s nod to a more equestrian era, no doubt.

I made a few modifications from Diana McKay's Mindful Yoga Socks instructions (free, through Ravelry.com), such as working from the toe up, keeping an inch of the ribbing all the way around the toes but working stockinette stitch for the bottom of the foot. I cast on with the stretchy Old Norwegian Cast On and bound off with my favorite Miraculous Elastic method.

Weeks passed, and I knit on various and sundry things I'll write about at a later date. My blog remained silent because I had nothing cohesive to add to it.

And then the temperatures began to fall, finally. In mid-October, for crying out loud. So, I pulled out the fat needles and bulky yarns which also happened to be green. (A feeble common denominator, thematically, for a blog post, but my life is what it is.)

I purchased both of the following yarns at the same time with the intention of creating a matchy-matchy winter wear set. And so I have.

OWL MITTS

Yarn: Mirasol Sulka in Pear
Yards: 72.6

My grandma Mc was an owl fan, and I thought of her while I made these Owl Study Gloves, pattern by Meghan Bosanko. Of course, I changed them a bit since I can't leave well enough alone. I added more stitches to the cast on since my wrists are of the stocky variety, and I repeated the ribbing at the fingers. Again, I used the cast on and bind off I mentioned earlier, except for the thumb which was the standard-issue bind off.

The buttons came from the collection handed down to me from my mom. I believe they're mother-of-pearl, the tiny kind that could once be found on the cuffs of ladies' dresses. So, my owls have beady, untrustworthy little eyes. They don't need to see anything, anyway.

MOURA HEADBAND

Yarn: same as above
Yards: 37.4

The rest of the Sulka I put into the Moura Headband, pattern by Clara Beauty.

I followed the example of a fellow knitter on Ravelry and tapered the beginning and ending of the headband. I had enough yarn to work only six pattern repeats, but I had enough left over to extend the tapered ending by three or four rows of seed stitching. I blocked it to about 23 inches before I seams the ends together.

I think that's the first yarn I have completely eliminated from stash.

ARCTIC VERT COWL

Yarn: Cascade Magnum
Yards: almost 212.8

Finally, I had a super chunky yarn that looks like pencil roving, so I put it into this cowl of fat, undulating cables designed by Patrizia Momigliano. It's called Arctic Blanc on Ravelry.

The husband told me I looked like a shady Star Wars character when I tried it on. Fine. A shady, WARM Star Wars character, thankyouverymuch.

I didn't modify the pattern in any way except for all the mistakes I made. I've never cabled on the edges of a project before, and twice I held the cable needle to the back instead of the front like I was supposed to. Also, my grafting stitches are loosey-goosey because I held the parallel needles too far apart.

For every mistake, I just was too unmotivated to fix it. If they can't be discerned by someone on the back of a galloping horse (equestrian nod, again), and I can tolerate them, then they get to settle in. There. Proof of tolerance on my part. Don't I feel morally wholesome now.

A grand total of 426 yards have taken their leave of Deep Stash with all this. A bit shy of a quarter of a mile. Not bad.

Crispy-first Sky Scarf

2015-07-10T13:09:00.001-05:00

Some of my closest friends are those I've known since college, so we're all somewhere in our forties now. One of them--maybe even me--received one of those Hallmark audio cards in which cartoon puppies/bunnies/unspecified, cutsey-snark mammals with the chipmunk voices congratulated its recipient for reaching over-the-hill status. For being more than well-done. For being crispy.

This was three or four years ago. When I turned forty-one around that time, another friend gave me one of the most decadent creations on the face of the earth: CHEESECAKE.

And, I decided to begin a sky scarf...which I apparently didn't share anything about here on the blog. My project notes on Ravelry are pretty sparse, too, but I'm going to share about it now, years later. You're welcome.

Sky scarves have been around for awhile, originating with Lea Redmond of Leafcutter Designs. The idea is to knit, every day, two rows that resemble the color of the sky for that day: one row to the opposite side of the scarf, one row back to the starting point.

I loved the idea, and figured my forty-first birthday was as good an occasion as any to begin one. So, I cast on 41 stitches. I decided to knit in a seed stitch pattern and to separate each month's set of rows with two black rows.

I used fingering weight yarn and held two strands together that were not always the same color (say, if there was a partly cloudy day, I held a blue and a white yarn together). In the end, I used a light blue, a dark blue, a light gray, a dark gray, white, a grungy tan for that season when the pastures in the Flint Hills are burning and the smoke drifts southward, and, of course, black. (I was fully prepared to include a pale green for those skies that look nauseous before tornados descend. I never had to, thankfully.)

I was pretty faithful to knit my two rows every day, for awhile. Each day around noon, I looked up, took note of the sky's color, wrote it in a pocket calendar I carried with me, and knit its likeness later in the day. And then, less than six months in, I got tired of it.

At which point, I would record a few days' colors before I knit them. And then in the ninth or tenth month, all I was doing was writing in my calendar. By my forty-second birthday, I had filled the calendar but not completed the scarf. That didn't happen until over a year later. There's only so long I can stand having a knitting UFO around before I rip it all out, and there was no way in all of God's Great Glory I was going to do that. So I buckled down and finished it.

All the time I worked on it, I carried the yarn colors I used most often up the side of the scarf. The yarns that I snipped off and then cast on again several days or weeks later were strands flopping out up and down the scarf. The snaking yarns and floppy yarns together made that side of the scarf look like Zeus' straggly monobrow. And then there was the fact the scarf had grown long enough to throttle Zeus, so I decided to connect the ends with a three-needle bind off, and I encased the ghastly side of the scarf with an applied i-cord.

I have worn this scarf two or three times since finishing it. On those days when the wind chill might have sandblasted my tender, aging skin, I piled a year's worth of days in loops over my face. I drove that way. People saw me with it on, a mountain of skies on my shoulders, but I didn't care. I didn't get freeze-dried crispy.

Travelogue, Kansas City (Area)

2015-06-21T18:29:00.000-05:00

When we get the Smart Car serviced in Merriam, we make a day of it, usually on the Kansas side of KC. Last time, we toured the new Ikea, listening to Christmas standards hyped up with a Latin beat.

This time, a sidewalk sale had broken out in downtown Overland Park, so we spent most of the afternoon at a handful of the shops.

The Snack Shop on Santa Fe makes the best sweet potato fries I've ever had anywhere (sorry #wichitawesome, but it's true). I didn't know our Ten Thousand Villages in Newton had closed, so at the surviving shop in OP, a bargain cross-body bag was purchased. Orange extract from Pensey's came home with us for attempts to create THOMY's favorite flavor of cake. He also snagged clothes for much less than expected.

We took a break from consumerism to wade in a public fountain and gawk at a flower.

Oh, right, and there was an instance of yarn bombing. A better look:

At the end of the afternoon, pie was savored.

Rhubarb pie

On the way home, we encountered a traditional road trip snack, one without the most appetizing of packaging.

And I only ever get to have a Hardees burger on the Turnpike now, which is probably for the best. Somehow, though, the meaning of life is involved with the waiting for one.

A prettier hint at life's meaning is probably a flower petal for every bug or bug for every flower petal. Or is that just a political slogan in the entomological world?

How I taught my dragon to count

2015-06-10T06:09:00.000-05:00

Deep Stash Departure Yardage
Since last tally:	2,379	1.35 miles
Total:	2,756	1.57 miles

I have a competitive smudge. Not a streak. No, it's just a smudge, like a little war paint under the eyes. (Though, I believe the modern stuff is called concealer, and I rarely do makeup, but of course here I'm speaking figuratively.) Because I constitutionally despise confrontation, and see most competitions as glorified strife, I am selective with the ones I participate in. A win isn't just a win but a means to an end. I'll fight a war to gain a better peace.

Now, in whittling down this stash of mine, the greater peace is gaining greater space in my house as well as reducing the clutter in my mind. To that end, then, I'm participating in a couple of competitions that spur me on to knit and crochet and knit some more, and to shop my stash to get it all done.

For a few years now, I've played along with the creative--genius, really--organizers of the Harry Potter Knit and Crochet House Cup on Ravelry. Every three months (with a month's break between "terms"), a clever set of volunteers head up a fiber lover's Hogwarts, complete with Houses, classes, quidditch matches, and advanced studies like OWLs and NEWTs. The stories these folks concoct to inspire the participants are worth more than the price of admission (FREE). I've already plowed through thousands of yards while playing this game.

Then recently, while listening to a few knitting podcasts, which I do sporadically, I found out about Stash Dash, another stash-shrinking competition started by The Knit Girllls. It's running between May 22 to August 14 this year. This, like its name states, is a decent, flat-out run I can do inside my marathon, so I've jumped into it.

Both the HPKCHP and Stash Dash have a similar rule about counting yardage/meterage when more than one strand of yarn is held together while knitting or crocheting. All strands are held as one, the logic goes, so the one length they lend themselves to is what is counted, not the lengths of the individual strands. I can understand this, well, line of thought (pun not intended, but I didn't edited it out). I don't entirely agree with it, but these are their games, so their rules.

My marathon, however, does not take that route. Because, and follow me here, ALL THE LENGTHS that leave my stash are no longer in my stash. What yardage was there before I finished a project and is not there afterwards, I count. Whether I hold a yarn single, double, triple, or by a half dozen to arm knit, each yarn's length has been removed from the stash. It gets counted. Case in point, the shawl that has taken me over the mile and a half mark just this week:

My version of Melanie Berg's Drachenfels Shawl (Dragon Rock, in English) was knit with lace weight yarn, all from stash. Two of the three colors came from Deep Stash. In order to thicken the yarns and meet the gauge for the sport weight yarn the pattern calls for, I held each color threefold by working it into a Navajo ply.

So, a shawl that would have taken about 1,150 yards in sport weight, took three times as much in the lace weight. When I submit this project to both the HPCKHC and Stash Dash, I'll say it took a Concurrent Length of 1,150 yards/1,052 meters. It's Stash Departure Length, however, is 3,451 yards; it's Deep Stash Departure length (for the two yarns that come from Deep Stash) is 2,379 yards.

I count it the longer way because that is how many yards are not in my stash anymore. The greater goal of this marathon, after all, is stash reduction. As of today, I have a grand total of a mile and a half missing from my Deep Stash. And I don't miss it, and that is the point. That is the win I'm striving for.

Tunisian Pax Scarf

2015-04-29T17:26:00.000-05:00

I've made a rip-roaring start to this Deep Stash Marathon thing. It's been fourteen weeks since my last post, the one announcing my marathon aspirations, and I have used up not quite a quarter of a mile of yarn.

Yep. A .21 mile stretch or 377 yards. Just call me The Flash.

Yet the project which used such a staggering amount didn't disappoint me, in the end. Along the way, I met with a setback when I ran out of the deep stash yarn I'd begun with. The completed Pax Scarf projects in Ravelry mostly indicated I'd have enough yarn in one Ella Rae Lace Merino hank to finish it. Uh, no.

What you're looking at in the photo is the main body of the scarf completed and most of the lace border at the point where I discovered I had about a foot of yarn left in my project bag. And this scarf was a class I was taking. Days of work went into the border, and only a few days remained until the next class session for which I was supposed to have the border done.

You know, eventually after shock comes the anger stage, yet I had to speed up the process and skip right to the grumbling since I had so little time to figure out what I was going to do.

I knew I would have to rip out the border, no matter what. So, I took a breath and did that deed. Then I went searching for replacement yarn. Naturally, I didn't have the right color in the right weight already in my stash. When I scoured the fingering weight section at my local yarn shop, however, I had another moment of shock. In a good way this time. Because there, with a multitude of hanks in a glass cubbie, sat a dead ringer for the blue shade that's in the Elle Rae. I sang hallelujah (yeah, you know, I probably did).

It is Araucania Nuble. I snagged a hank of it and started off again. Once the border was done, I edged the scarf in the Ella Rae, blocked it, and voila!

I think it looks better with the blue Araucania as the lace border than it did with the Ella Rae as the whole thing.

Oh, and I'd like to place a wee review in here about the new blocking wires by Lazadas I used on this project. They are F l E x I b L e--twisty, curvy, bendy, and they didn't get stuck in those shapes once I was done with them. The Pax Scarf is actually the second project I blocked with them, and I am a fan.

I bought the set of three 70"-long and four 35"-long wires, the "Mixed Set." The set comes with a packet of 30 T-pins. Oh, and I'm not getting a single perk from plugging these wires, just so you know. I bought the set outright on Amazon.

I've already started the next project with deep stash yarn. Hopefully, this one will dispense with way more yardage. In the meantime, an artsy, parting photograph...

Deep Stash Marathons

2015-01-18T14:00:00.000-06:00

We're approaching the third week of the new year, so my resolution is right on time. And with a new year comes a new Deep Stash challenge. Why? Because that yarn isn't going away by itself. Another Deep Stash 9 challenge won't cut it, however. DS9 eliminated a mere 5,178 yards out of the more than 33K of what I considered deep stash last year (yarn acquired during 2008 and earlier). In addtion to what was left over from DS9, I am increasing Deep Stash to include 2009 and 2010 yarn. My philosophy is that any yarn five years or older in my stash is mature enough to be out on its own in the world, being worn or admired or clogging up someone else's stash. With the inclusion of those years, however, the total yardage of my Deep Stash has swollen into something horrendously huge.

That is, marathon huge.

Okay. two marathons huge.

Yes, Deep Stash has enough yardage now to cover the length of two marathons--92,290 yards. Apparently, I went bat guano crazy in 2009 and 2010 and thought I had to insulate my entire house with nothing but yarn, thereby almost tripling my yarn stash at the time. (I have not literally stuffed the walls with yarn, of course. It's harder to get to that way.)

So, here's the plan: I am focusing my efforts on Deep Stash, and I am going to see how long it takes me to work my way through 46,145 yards of yarn, one marathon's worth. I know, I know. I have at least two marathon's worth. For that second amount, then, I'm going to see whether I can give away, sell, and/or toss an additional 46,145 yards.

Gah! The very idea sends my electrolytes plummeting!

I might not be able to do the concurrent marathon; I might be too yarn flabby or hooked on it or whichever pathology the DSM-V might pin on me. But I think I must try. Both challenges will make my basement craft grotto look so much bigger.

A few guidelines and allowances:

The focus is on Deep Stash, but I may work with newer yarn from time to time, either from newer stash or brand, spanking-new yarn. I would like to keep DS work to three out of four projects, though.

I may buy new yarn without a project in mind. However, I want to finish the race(s) with more yards eliminated from the stash than what I take in. My ultimate goal from June 2013 hasn't changed; I want to fit all my stash in my dad's old bureau.

There you have it. This isn't a resolution that can be contained to 2015. More than likely it will extend into the next three or four years. After doing a lot of math for this post, I discovered the most I've knit in one year is 12,072 yards. Now that I'm not employed at a yarn store, I can knit my own yarn more often, yet I'm not as motivated to finish projects quickly by shop sample deadlines. I'll have to figure out how to "pace myself," I guess. I will endeavor to keep the blog up to date with my progress...for myself and for the sake of my throngs of readers.

Throwback Thursday, vocab edition

2014-07-31T08:00:00.000-05:00

Last August, I had taken to a spot at a local university's library. My quiet corner was a place where even the list of chores I kept in my head had to shush as I read and sometimes wrote for awhile each week. After the fall semester began, I discovered several tables had been set up near my spot. A used book sale was underway, each book only one dollar.

I’m a sucker for a bargain, but I have no room at home for more books. I’m a wannabe book worm with shelves of the things still needing to be read. Yet, whenever my concentration wandered from the book I’d brought from home, there the sale tables lay in wait for me. Did I get up and find another spot to avoid temptation? No. I am stubborn. I was not going to buy a book.

So I just looked. Once, to stretch my legs, I trailed up and down the aisles closest to my spot, my neck bowed and cricked as I read the titles. Fortunately, many there were the library's copies of outdated textbooks or about computer languages deader than Latin and with no hope of being as interesting. The tables stayed up for weeks, and I found I could ignore them pretty well, eventually. Because I wasn't going to take any of them home.

Then came the day I wandered too far. In my defense, I believe my spot was occupied when I arrived at the library, so I went hunting for another one. I happened to wander by the end of a book sale table I hadn't bothered with before. More textbooks, more tired reference works, I'd assumed.

Two colossal volumes caught my attention. Three words on both spines stopped my heart. And feet.

...Oxford English Dictionary

THE Oxford English Dictionary? No. Not here. No one would sell those. Well, maybe two of them, if that's all there was...

THE COMPACT EDITION OF THE OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY

What. You mean...that is to say, you mean, the version where all the umpteen volumes are in just two books? The one that wouldn't occupy miles of shelf space in any given home, like mine? That one? THAT ONE?!?!

Oh yes. That one.

Oh my ever-loving God.

Seriously, folks, I actually looked up to see if anyone else was about to swoop in for this prize. Had no one else seen these here all this time? I touched one, lifted it, set it on the backs of WordPerfect manuals (or whatever was underneath it, as if I was paying attention), and I opened it.

Understandably, you may not get why I love this dictionary. I’ll explain. This compendium is the chronicle of the soul of the English language. I pored over its pages in college as if reading the secret diaries of my mother tongue. The OED is not just a book of definitions. It reveals the definitions' ancestry and the first known use of words in writing. The dictionary deepens literature and breaks some of its codes. It's only a little bit of a stretch to say that all the thousands of dollars spent on my higher education was worth it, just to be introduced to these books.

And now every single word in them could be mine for two dollars. Total.

You're damn straight I took those books home, schlepping them to the other side of the campus--I'm telling you, the English Language weighs a ton in late summer--where my car was waiting. I found room for them on our shelves. It was only two books, after all. And I've lived happily with them ever since.

Says she, like this was a proper fairy tale. No, I didn’t match soul-destroying obstacles with overcoming heroism; I pounced on a pearl worthy of a greater price, and I’m not sorry. I’m sharing my geeky confession with you to help you understand why I want to present rusty ol’ words from the OED, and why I’d rather do this on Throwback Thursdays than toss grimace-inducing photos from the late twentieth century onto my Facebook feed. If I share more OED words, they won’t come with lengthy explanations like now. Really.

So, with the help of a powerful magnifying glass and a bit of paraphrasing to unpack the dictionary’s abbreviations, today’s TBT Vocab Word from the good people at Oxford:

Repai'ring -- (a noun derived from a verb, rare.) The act of going or resorting (to a place); (obsolete) return; (obsolete) place of repair or resort.

Earliest recorded use in 1375 by John Barbour in The Bruce: "Heir I saw the men..mak luging [making camp]. Heir trow [true] I be their repayring.

Page 2493 of the Compact OED

I now own such a treasure because of my repairing to a library.

Deep Stash 9, the initial frontier

2014-07-21T10:00:00.000-05:00

I've left a lot of the last several months unrecorded on this blog. When I last waxed on and on, I was giving Monday The Finger, right? It turns out that not only has my defiance helped me throw off the Monday Blahs, but so has just owning up to the blahs out loud, in print. Digital print, anyway.

I was kind of surprised by that. It's not that I was trying to keep my intermittent depression a secret and that tossing it into the blogosphere became a huge relief from a hoarded burden. I hadn't been secretive, but the relief came anyway. After I set it all down into (moderately) ordered thoughts for more witnesses than just my journal pages to stew over, I somehow created distance--an interruption to some self-defeating cycle. I have had very few very bad Mondays since.

One of the things I've left unrecorded here is that I have finally “Deep Stashed” nine projects. I'm bummed I didn't share the process here. I said I would try, but nope. Didn't happen. I actually made eleven projects, but two different yarns sourced two projects each. So, in order of completion:

(Each project title is a link to its respective Ravelry page.)

Asymetrical Cables Socks, blogged about here. (281yards of yarn used.)

Hourglass Throw, also blogged at the aforementioned link. (1512 yards used.)

Magical Mystery Headband, an attempt to mimic a stitch pattern on a small scale. (A meager 88 yards used.)

Juno Regina Stole, blogged here. (818 yards)

Buckland Sweater, blogged here. I dipped into that Donegal Tweed yarn again to test knit a currently unpublished cowl pattern. I wish I could show you a picture, but it'll have to wait until the designer releases the pattern. (1114 yards used, in total)

Little Minx socks. For a busy yarn, I made the counter-intuitive match to a busy pattern. The pattern is regular, however, so it doesn't get lost in the manic color changes and actually tames the colorway a little, in my opinion. Which was the one that counted, since I was knitting it. (286 yards)

From a skein of thermonuclear green Caron Simply Soft that WILL NOT DIE, I made two projects: Nermal the Roly Poly Kitty and a set of IV Site Wrist Covers for the pediatric ward at a local hospital. These two projects were also used in my local yarn shop's BINGO game, which is still going on. Nermal covered the Toy Square, and the fingerless mitts covered the Charity square. I'll have to blog more about the Bingo game later. (79 yards altogether)

Meadowsweet Cardigan, suitable to cover the Something for Baby square in Bingo. (234 yards used.)

Birds of a Feather shawlette. Is it a skinny shawl? A fat-ended scarf? Yes! It's also the first mystery knitalong I've ever done, all to check off another Bingo square. (766 yards of two different yarns)

That's the first nine projects. Did the nearly 5200 yards of yarn I plowed through knock a dent in my oldest stash, the yarn I bought in a new knitter frenzy back in 2007/08? Um, no. Not even. I did the math. I have almost nineteen MILES of yarn left. (I converted the total into miles because the yardage number is just too ridiculous to type. You go convert it back if you really want to know.) So, I'm considering my options. I might give away some of the yarn, sell it, or (more likely) keep knitting it. I'll let know.

And Mondays

2014-01-19T15:40:00.000-06:00

"Rainy days and Mondays always get me down." -- The Carpenters

Unlike Karen Carpenter, I love rainy days: The gray, monolithic clouds, the cool, the thunder, how green grass oddly brightens under all that gloom. Some people thrive on sunshine, but I'm more alive with the rain. Maybe rainy days, for all the noise they can produce, appeal to the introvert in me. Even daylight needs a retreat from humanity behind a curtain of clouds.

Karen and I are sisters as far as Mondays go, though. For years, until recently, that wasn't the case. To me, The Monday Blahs was just a shorthand way of expressing one's disappointment in the brevity of the weekend. The barely-registered downer might bring a grimace, but not more.

Not so, lately. The Blahs have morphed into something tenacious. In fact, "blah" is a euphemism because sometimes the dark impotence and loathing that creeps up in me late Sunday feels nearly tangible. For several weeks of Mondays I haven't trusted my judgement when I wonder if my relief might come on the heels of drastic change--destruction of a creative project I hold dear but have been stumped on for weeks. Just shred it, I think. Better yet, shred all your creative efforts. Start over. That'll help.

Of most options beginning with destruction, I am instantly suspicious. So Monday after Monday for a chunk of last year, I just hunkered down and bore this weird, 24-hour emotional flu, resisting my aforementioned instincts and waiting for it all to ease up. I would bear it alone in the house or out in public. When out, I gained a clearer perspective. I wasn't less convinced of my loathsomeness, but I was more able to untangle myself from the hold it had on me. I could breathe when I was out and about and had things to do.

It's important to mention here that I have always had some murmur of what the romantics called melancholia. As a child I had it and as an adolescent: I endured a semester's spell of it in college; and dips and turns of it have stretched into my midlife. Winston Churchill labeled his depression The Black Dog. I have never known it to have so much personality. I call it The Black Hole--the collapse of one's sense of self into a numbness from which even light can't escape. That's the belief at the time, of course, in the throes of it, but that's just another unreliable instinct I've had to outlast.

This means I know what I've been dealing with every Monday and occasionally on Saturdays. Why these days, I'm not sure. Perhaps I became conditioned to feeling crappy on Mondays, independent of the original reason I felt that way. For whatever reason, for however it started, it is. And I got tired of barely bearing it.

So I started giving these days The Finger.

That's an inelegant way of putting it, crass, but that's how I felt when I got sick of just squeaking through Mondays. Giving Monday The Finger is why I bring all this here, on my show-and-tell blog. The survival skill started on a day when I couldn't get out of the house to distract myself. I was in the thick of hating myself, and my mind wouldn't let me slog two words together with grace. My fingers wouldn't make the tiny motions to knit. I was so tired of this, I had to do something. So I took a larger move, staging a rebellion against my helplessness by cleaning a ceiling fan and its light fixtures, Then I cleaned the light fixture in the office. Another time, I dragged all the ingredients together to bake something. The process was laborious; each project took a long time because my muscles hated me, but I made them stir the batter, scrub the surface, or do whatever large motion I determined I had to do to beat back Monday.

By fighting back, I improved something. My environment, most noticeably. It was cleaner, smelled yummier, felt less like a cage, and that reward has been an anti-depressant in its own right. My grimness hasn't vanished magically, however; in the back of my mind, it still simpers at my worth. Yet I've trusted for a long time that I don't get to determine my own value. God's life bought mine back from all the lies everyone--including me--tells. Even so, I had not needed to so diligently remind myself of that truth with actions, until lately.

This Saturday, the hole began to open up again. This time, I arranged beauty against it.

I don't have Before pictures, but I hung a growing collection of photos and art on my dining room wall. I had some pieces on the wall already, but they were too spread out, and I needed space to include more. Some of the work I hung is mine, some a friend's, and the sketches are by a stranger whose work I ran across at an art fair. Since I'm not including a DIY tutorial here, I'll simply provide a link or two for the method I used to arrange them.

The clock and window box mirror were there already, and I didn't want to move them. Since they had a significant gap between them, I divided the pictures into two groupings. I walk through the room now and smile. Maybe someday I won't have to muster as much defiance to get a job like this done. But I might have to. Even tomorrow, on Monday.

Deep Stash, Fourth Project

2013-10-27T23:28:00.000-05:00

I knit a sweater in two weeks.

A sweater. For me. Even modified to resize it a bit more generously, the pattern was easy-peasy.

Buckland is knit in two pieces, each one beginning at the sleeve and working toward the center where the live stitches are NOT seamed NOR grafted but joined to the other half with a three-needle bind off. Because the wrong sides of the knitting are facing each other during the bind off, a pretty ridge is created down and front as well as the back, below.

This is a bind off I learned from the very first project I cast on when I began to knit with needles, so the whole process was smooth...much smoother than the Donegal Tweed Chunky yarn I used. That wool is kinda rough, but not so much it should've been a rug rather than my sweater.

The only tricky part of the sweater was casting on for the side "seam" once the sleeve was done. I tried to shoot a little video of how I finally did it, but I'm no cinematographer with the equipment I have at my disposal (an iPod Touch with no tripod). If at some point I can figure out how to record it, I'll add the video here. Suffice it to say in still pictures, the "seam" starts out like this:

Then the front and back grow simultaneously as the rows are knit and purled up and over the shoulder, back and forth, until the work is ready to be divided for the neck.

The side seam is subtle, when the sweater is all done.

Buckland chewed up over a thousand yards of yarn and cleared out a drawer and a half in one of my plastic storage chests. I have some of the Donegal Tweed left over, but I'll find another pattern for it eventually. Maybe even for another Deep Stash 9 project.

Deep Stash, Third Project

2013-08-04T19:39:00.003-05:00

After two months, it's done. The Juno Regina Stole.

The pattern, at Knitty.com, is by Miriam L. Felton. The yarn is Alpaca Cloud laceweight by Knit Picks. I have a nit to pick with that yarn, by the way, but later.

For now, I know I mentioned I might post an in-progress view of the stole. Instead, I just kept knitting on it; I was determined to finish it by the end of July. As recompense, I do have a few shots of the wrap while it was blocking. I tried a couple of new-to-me techniques of which I wanted to keep a record.

Since I don't have a Hogwarts Great Hall table in my dining room, and because I knew this thing would block to over seventy inches (finaly tally: 94"), I folded it in half to block it. In the picture below, you might think you're seeing double, but it's just the lower level of knitting that's a tad offset.

Also, while I love love LOVE blocking wires, they do not come in half sizes. I needed short wires to set the points of the stole. (Letting long wires do the job, all the while sticking out over the edge of the table, is an open invitation for a cat to get his eye poked out from PLAY. MUST PLAY! ATTACK the sticky-outy things!!!)

Of course, I could cut one of the wires I already have, but that kind of rashness I save for breaking alpaca laceweight yarn three times when its center-pull ball keeps throwing up knots and snarls and general mayhem at all hours of the day and night.

Not that I'm never going to use this yarn again. I could. I've learned its limits now and respect them. High-maintanence, prima donna, breath-of-god soft stuff that it is.

Anyway. I used a pair of metal knitting needles to set the stole's points.

And everything turned out all right.

The stole is about fourteen inches wide.

And I'll probably wear it more like this, as a loose scarf, than around my shoulders as a stole.

I'm working on projects right now that either don't involve stash or are using yarn that hasn't spent much time with its elderly counterparts. But more Deep Stash work is in the queue! In the form of socks, probably, because this wet, mild summer will eventually dip into even cooler temperatures.

Soggy tomatoes, anyone?

Deep Stash 9

2013-06-09T17:09:00.002-05:00

I have a hugantic yarn stash. I began collecting yarn back when I knit only on looms, seven and a half years ago, but the majority of the hoard came into being after I switched to knitting needles a short time later. The needles made me think I could knit faster, I guess, but I couldn't keep up. The fiber just appeared in my house--skein after bagload--as if someone had fed the first few of them after midnight.

In the early days, when the stash filled a mere bin or two, I logged it all into Ravelry.

You're looking at Deep Stash.

It wasn't an overwhelming task, really, and I loved seeing my yarn displayed on one webpage. Since then, I have continued to keep track of it via Ravelry. I would buy a few skeins, use one immediately, but mostly tuck the rest of it away until a project worthy of the precious yarnie-warnie came my way. And so my Ravelry stash page grew.

Not even half of it.

Also, my dad's old wardrobe is now involved for storage, as well as four sets of plastic, stackable chests of drawers. And there is overflow. A knitter doesn't divulge exact, total yardage in mixed company (meaning, non-yarn ~~obsessives~~ connoisseurs), but the numbers on Ravelry tell me I could unreel a continuous line of string from my house to Tulsa, no problem. Whenever I was in the same room as The Stash, I felt confronted by it. It was a wall of yarn, skeins inhumanely caged because so much potential was just sitting there. If the yarn could talk, it would've been muttering resentfully.

Let me tell you, confrontational yarn loses a lot of its preciousness in a big hurry.

So in January, I began diving into my stash more often for projects. Now, the fact that I started doing this after New Year's Day is more or less coincidence. I didn't act from a resolution, in other words, because resolutions made in January are like snowflakes made in May--they're doomed to die as soon as they hit ground. (And around here this year, we knew about Maytime snowflakes.) No, I was simply appalled at the stash-strocity around that time of year when winter was at its deepest and darkest. I became determined to whittle it down, so I reacted without much forethought. Thus was born Deep Stash 9.

Projects made from my oldest yarn acquisitions (the "Deep Stash") have been and will continue to be my main focus this year. I've already completed two projects which I've pictured below, and I'm working on the third. I've knit other projects in between them--those made from more recent additions to my stash and those made with brand new yarns for the local yarn shop where I work. Primarily, though, I am focusing on the stash yarns with the oldest vintage.

How old is that? Also, have I made any other guidelines for myself? Here are the bullet point specs:

Yarns acquired during 2008 or earlier are eligible for The Nine*.
Most of the yardage of a particular yarn must be used in the project, so leftovers are allowed.
I can knit or crochet with other yarn, too, especially other yarn from my stash. My goal is to reduce the general size of the stash, after all.

That's pretty much it. I'm not even giving myself a time limit, like I Must Knit All Old Yarn By 2014. Since I would like to reduce the size of my entire stash so that it will all fit into my dad's wardrobe, I'm just going to work stitch by stitch, yard by yard, until enough of it is gone. Until I'm most of the way back home from Tulsa, that is.

With all of that explained, the first project of Deep Stash 9 was a pair of socks knit with a superwash merino wool dyed as "Coffee Bean" by Beyond Basic Knits.

Like most of the other yarns in The Nine, I bought this one in 2008. The dyer is no longer selling yarn on etsy.com, apparently; I can find no trace of her there.

The pattern is Asymmetrical Cables by Cookie A, from the book Sock Knitting Master Class by Ann Budd.

The second project is a blanket, Hourglass Throw, by Anne Hanson.

I bought the yarn as mill ends from another now-defunct online seller Angelicrafts. It was a great deal, even though Caron Simply Soft is already inexpensive, but I'd never seen this heathered plum in stores. I had intended to knit THOMY a sweater with it since purple is his favorite color, but I made the blanket instead to give to his stepmom who recently underwent chemotherapy. I wanted her to have it as her chemo blanket, but I sorely underestimated the time it took to knit. In the end, she got the blanket for Mother's Day.

I'll post the other Nine individually, and probably while they're in progress. And I do my utmost to keep the other posts from being this freakishly long.

*Why NINE? If you're a Trekkie of any depth, you don't really have to ask that question. And, yes, I accidentally typed "Space" at least once. To directly answer a question THOMY posed to me: No, there will be no Ferengi sweaters included. Not even ear muffs.

Happy Independence Day

2012-07-04T07:19:00.001-05:00

To all my fellow Americans of these United States, may you have a happy and safe Independence Day.

If you're allowed to shoot fireworks in your neck of the bone-dry country (we are, though the prairie could burst into flame from a flash of anger), please don't be stupid. It could make you sad.

And possibly disfigured. (No, I didn't take a picture of a disfigured breakfast. Ew.)

I did, however, shoot a creepy angle of Happy Breakfast...

...using my hard-fought freedom for sober and noble purposes only.

Progeny

2012-06-07T10:41:00.001-05:00

Remember this pumpkin we adopted from the Louisburg Cider Mill last fall?

Well, it lived with us inside the house until well after Christmas. At last it began softening, and we had to escort it to our open-air compost pile in which the pumpkin dissolved like all biodegradable matter should.

Months passed.

Later this spring, a bush of some sort appeared in the compost heap, and I took a picture of it with my camera phone. I asked my gardener friends what the heck this could be.

"Pumpkin vines, maybe," one of them suggested. And, behold, a duh moment thundered over yours truly. I had completely forgotten about the pumpkin we'd left there.

Now, I've never grown pumpkins before because, honestly, I'm not a pumpkin fan. Not to eat, not to carve. The pumpkin these vines descended from was just the second one I've taken home during my adulthood. I didn't do anything with it or to it but set it in my living room as fall decoration, au naturale.

Even so, I was ever so excited when the volunteer vines began blooming.

Since I took these photos, about three weeks ago, we've had a hail storm. The leaves on the pumpkin vines survived intact, more or less, but the vines themselves have spread out more. I don't know if this is just the nature of pumpkin vines or if the storm forced the sprawl. In either case, we're keeping our eyes on them. No tiny pumpkins have appeared yet, but I'll post the news here if they do.

Using up the sweets stash

2012-04-29T16:25:00.000-05:00

In the last post I said I'd "soon" show you what I did with my leftover graham cracker crumbs, from when I made the Easter cheesecake. Well, by "soon," I guess I meant within in the month, and that's almost instantaneous in geologic time, which is how we live around here.

So we left our hero with about three cups of crumb crust mixture (graham cracker crumbs, butter, and sugar) and a big puzzle about what to do with it. With some of it, she drizzled the leftover chocolate candy melts and had a little Me Time in front of the noon-hour news.

The rest could make a great topping for ice cream, no doubt, but she wanted something more…something substantial. Something that would use up a few other sweet ingredients that had been lying in wait throughout the kitchen.

And something quick. And easy. And photogenic, right?

Well, two out of three ain't bad. But that crumbly mess is so good! A quick search of the Taste of Home recipe site turned up the S'mores Crumb Bars concoction. Three of its five ingredients I had mixed up already in the leftover crumbs. The last two were in my cupboards.

First came half the crumb mixture, compacted into the bottom of the pan as if you're about to lay bricks on top.

Then the chocolate chips and the tiny marshmallows. I had partial bags of semisweet chips and milk chocolate chunks. My marshmallows had lived too long next to the toaster oven in the bread box and had melded together. I just pulled them apart again. Sticky fingers are fun.

Then came the second layer of crumbs, pressed down again. Spatula marks are evidence of effort.

The pan spent ten minutes at 375-degrees F in the toaster oven. The top crust browned a little more than would be acceptable in restaurants, but we're alright with it here.

A tastier picture:

I'm pretty sure I didn't match the ingredient measurements exactly on anything in the recipe. Probably more butter would have cemented the crumbs more thoroughly. Nevertheless, the pan of bars turned out delicious. I mean, good grief, how wrong can you go with graham crackers, chocolate, and marshmallows? Especially since the traditional method of cooking requires the marshmallows to be set on fire?

The Cheesecake

2012-04-08T16:10:00.000-05:00

On my latest wedding anniversary, a few well wishers on Facebook reminisced about the kind of cake we'd had at the reception. We served cheesecakes I had made over the week prior to the big day. I had never undertaken a baking project like that before (or since), and I didn't save any money by doing it myself. Except, maybe, I would've shelled out twice as much to delegate such a scrumptious cake to a pro...a scrumptious cake I almost didn't get to enjoy. You see, the venue's event planner attempted to hurry us to the next reception custom at the moment we dared to sit down to have a piece. I know, right? The baker-bride gets her cake tax, so, dearie, sustenance comes before slinging a garter. Every time.

The cake that inspired one of our wedding party to go back for fourths (ushering is hungry work, too, after all) is called Captivation Cheesecake, a recipe from a Wilton book I borrowed from my sister-in-law. I think the title is A Treasury of Wilton Wedding Cakes, Updated Edition, but my memory isn't crystal clear on that anymore. (Sister-in-law--you know who you are--am I right on this?)

And I mention all this because I attempted to recreate the cake the other day. Just one cake, I mean, not the entire construction project. Even so, gentle reader, all did not go smoothly. After seventeen years, I'd forgotten a couple of tips from the baking marathon of yore.

The reason why I decided to make another wedding cheesecake is because THOMY suggested I bring one to our church's Easter potluck brunch. We're invited to bring something from which we may have been fasting during Lent or some special treat in which we don't indulge very often. Based on the Facebook comments about our anniversary, THOMY thought it would be awesome to share the joy of wedding cheesecake.

I couldn't deny anyone such awesomeness, that would be uncharitable. So I dragged out the ole Wedding Cheesecake Pan and Mixing Bowls I used back then.

As well as the hand mixer.

This was my mom's from the 1970s. I got a newer one as a wedding gift, but it's motor burnt out in less than a year. This one just keeps going, I think in defiance of its avocado green casing.

Now, the first thing I forgot regarding this recipe is that it makes a LOT of graham cracker crumbs for the crust. Too much for one cake, even though the recipe claims everything listed is for one 9" cake or two 6" cakes.

When I first made this recipe, I simply used the excess in more cake crusts since I needed roughly a gazillion cakes. Now I was stuck with about three cups more than I needed. What to do? What to do?*

Next I forgot that one should melt candy chips in the microwave before the very point the bottom gets burnt and breaks the bowl.

This development was a real bummer. I panicked for a full half minute, trying to figure out how I was going to get myself to the grocery store for more candy melts when my car was blocked by a contractor repairing our driveway that day.

But no! An Easter miracle met me right there in the kitchen. I had just enough white chocolate chips left in the bag to add to the unburnt stuff. So I melted them, very carefully. Disaster averted.

Also, I'd forgotten how heavy a glass mixing bowl is when filled with batter that sloshes and slicks the edges of the bowl. Pouring the glop into the pan without dropping the whole thing and flipping the pan onto the floor felt like an Olympic event for a few harrowing seconds. I guess I'm not as young as I used to be when I first hefted a full mixing bowl to make Wedding Cheesecake.

In the end, however, I managed to reproduce my original results.

And the cake was well received at brunch. I even had a taste of THOMY's slice, and we got to take some home which is way more than we managed to do all those years ago. And that is as it should have been, as long as I got my tax. Not that I wasn't thinking about myself on Easter Sunday.

*What I did with the excess crumbs shall be revealed in a later post. Soon.

Yes, you are at the Scrapdash blog. Yep, it looks...different. Gone with the dark red to make way for freshness and light because I am sick today and am, therefore, bored.

As of this post, I still need to work out a better blog header than bare-bones letters. Unfortunately, my savvy days of working with graphic programs are mostly behind me; I haven't played with such a creature in years. So, you may see my left-justified "Scrapdash" at the top for awhile. Or, maybe I'll crank out something else by tonight.

If I'm not asleep.