Stash Busting Time

Well I have finally gotten around to organising my considerable yarn stash. All the yarn has been sorted by type & weight. A large suitcase jammed full of winter yarn & acrylic has been shipped off to my parents for storage and the rest has been put away in crates and a chest. I have even gone so far as to put about 2/3rd onto my Ravelry pages, I might get around to adding the remainder at some stage or may just add it as I knit it. Now that I have all the yarn organised I really need to get a lot of it knitted into something rather than just have it taking up space. It does seem that a side affect of having organised my yarn is the uncontrollable urge to cast-on dozens of projects as there were some forgotten gems among the stash. Along side the gems there are a few (make that several) yarns which I am not sure why I purchased them or what I will ever knit with them but I can not bring myself to throw them away.

The first project I have cast on is:

Pattern: Jessie Ribbon Bag from Rowan Felted Collection
Yarn: Rowan Tapestry in colour 174
Cast-on: 02-June-2010

I have slightly deviated from the pattern by knitting the first 3 rows (and I will knit the last 3) as I do not like the way the bag appears to roll at the top even after felting in the pictures I have seen of this bag. Also in the dye-lot I have cast-on with I only have 4 balls while the pattern calls for 5. I have another 10 balls in the same colour way from a different dye-lot. As the bag is constructed from one large knitted panel my plan is to knit till I have used up 2 balls then if I think it is going to be too short I will use a ball from the other dye-lot then use up the two remaining balls from the dye-lot I have cast on with. There does not seem to be much visible difference between the dye-lots and I think it will be even less noticeable once the knitting has been felted.

As this is a very easy (read potentially boring) project my plan is to try and knit at least 6 rows every day till it is done. If I don’t knit at least a little bit on it each day I can see myself getting so far then putting it away for a long time although, at the moment, I am excited to get it in the washing machine & try out felting for the first time. Hopefully I will not get diverted from my plan to knit through my stash by any new yarn purchases or by starting too many projects. The next thing I am going to organise is my pile of knitting WIPs and maybe create a rotation (with slots for new starts of course) in order to try and actually finish some projects.