Updates

I've been in a right knitting funk since finishing my blanket. Casting things on, feeling overwhelmed by longstanding WIPs, not really wanting to work on anything... I was also owed money by a gallery and beginning to panic that they were never going to pay up, so I went through my stash and spent a couple of days putting it all on ebay. I say all, I've still got enough to last me a year at least!

I promised my mum that I'd knit a pair of socks for her friend as a Christmas present. I gave mum the first pair of socks I knit last year (made them too small) and she loves them. She asked if I wouldn't mind whipping up a pair for Sue as Sue's made lots of lovely things for me over the years (she's an incredible seamstress). I did not enjoy knitting these socks, in fact I hated knitting them! The yarn was lovely and the pattern was nice but it's just the small rounds, fiddly dpns (and I dislike magic-loop even more so that wasn't an option). I had to knuckle down and get them done!

 The yarn was a past club colour from Life in the Long Grass called Garden Fall, I think from the Autumn club last year. The colours in the skein were soothing as I worked on the socks, they really did reflect the colours outside as the leaves fell.

Speaking of yarn, back to my massive de-stash on ebay! I've been feeling a little overwhelmed by all the yarn I accummulated over the last couple of years (since discovering indie dyers). Indie dyers are great, but the nature of their work means you get into this odd mindset that you *must buy* when they do updates because they might not dye up a particular colour again for a while, or dye it up quite the same sort of tone in the next batch (or never dye it up again!!). Then you have their yarn clubs, which are great but again, you end up accummulating yarn very rapidly with no concrete plans for what to knit with it. I kept opening my stash boxes and staring at all the yarn and trying to make plans to use it up. It just wasn't working for me...

The good thing about dyers like Hedgehog Fibres is that you can generally re-sell the yarn at a good price via their group's ISO/de-stash board, the same goes for stuff like Bohus leftovers, although I ended up dealing with a bit of a Wally over my Bohus yarn scraps. And why are there so many idiots on ebay? Questions about some yarn I was selling included 'why did you unravel it?' - fair enough that one, a bit nosey, but it could have been because the yarn was horrible to work with. Then there was 'what does frogged mean?', erm, if you can use ebay then you can use GOOGLE! FOllowed by 'What were you knitting?', none of your business!!!!! I got quite wound up by that person and didn't reply because the tone of the messages was fairly rude in tone, I'd rather give my yarn away than sell it to rude people. Incidentally, that particular skein didn't sell so I gave it to the charity shop the very next day! 

All that yarn selling and I bought this! I've wanted some if this colourway for ages (lace club colour - Husk), so I jumped at the chance to get a double-skein. Then I left the Hedgehog Fibres Rav group, the ISO/Destash thread is just too much of a temptation for me. 

I've spotted the hashtag #wipdowntogether on Instagram over the last month, a lovely idea (knitters often seem to cast on many things!). I was planning to finish all my WIPs and then I made the snap decision to rip them all. Funnily enough this was at the same time as my massive ebay destash. All the ripped yarn was listed, all of it sold too! I spent some of the funds on some Shetland Heather for my next project, a gorgeous cardigan from Twist Collective's Autumn 2015 collection. I'll link to it later, I'm typing this post on my phone!

I'm currently working on a lovely test knit, I'm pretty sure that my gauge had changed since I started knitting though (and yes, I did swatch!). It'll work as written (I tried it on last night), just not as I had originally planned to knit it.