Stash

As I listen to various podcasters, Lime & Violet, Brenda Dayne, I can help but feel jealous as I hear then wax poetic *nice phrase huh?* about there large stashes. I want a stash. When it's to cold for me to go out I want to be able to have a stash of yarn that I can grab from.

Now I know I'm a new knitter, and a good stash takes time to build up. My nonstash problems do not stem from the length of time I have been knitting, but it's stems from lack of good yarn.

Where I live *In a capital city no less* I have 3 stores to choose from when buying yarn. Wal-Mart *Hello Red Heart* Hobby Lobby *Hello Red Heart and Yarn Bee* and Ben Franklin. I had forgotten about Ben Franklin until last week, I was driving down 3rd street and thought BF, Maybe they have some decent yarn. I walked up and down and finely found the yarn area, two ailes. One with of course, Red Heart, and another with other yarn, I got a little excited, "Hey I might find decent yarn"

I spotted a yarn ban that said Alpaca, I got really excited, after hearing everyone talk about alpaca yarn. I looked at it. 85% alpaca 15% acrylic. Hmmm, even our specialty yarn here has acrylic in it. I know I will go back and buy some, it's the closest I'll come before I order online. but it's $9 and I would need 3 balls to just make a decent sized scarf (they are very small balls). Unfortunatly my bank account doesn't like that. I did spot 100% wool yarn, and I know I will buy that, just for the chance to knit something that's not acrylic.

Why don't I buy on-line you ask? With wonderful places like BlueMoon Fiber Arts, and Esty, and Lisa Souza, and many many more. I don't know. I guess it's because I am a new knitter, and therefore are not as confident in my skills. I don't want to buy this great yarn and having nothing to make with it, other then scarves.

Which brings me to my newest project. I started on a pair of jaywalkers. It has been interesting. I have never used DPN's or even needles that small. Since I have huge size 11 feet, I'm sure that these won't fit. But I'm doing the larger size with size 2 needles. The only fingering yarn I could find in this town is 100% cotton, so that would shrink anyway in the wash. But this is a good learning project, I'm on my 3rd row and seem to be getting a hang of using the needles. The cast on was hell, I had to cast and recast on about 6 times before I was able to actually knit, then I kept dropping the cast on stitches. But I will not be denied. I preregisered for the Socks that Rock club. So I have a deadline, I have to be able to knit a sock by then.

Since I couldn't talk myself into buying some yarn, I did purchase one of those sushi wallet kits. That is going to be my first foray into felting. If I can borrow my friends washer that is.



On the needles: Jaywalkers.
New to the Stash: Nothing *sniff sniff*
In the Player: Pixar's CARS