Monday, May 28, 2007



Knitting from Stash

Anyone who knows me well will already know that I have far, far to much yarn to ever knit in a lifetime and recently a few of my friends on the Crafty Threads 'n' Yarns forum have decided to knit from their stashes for a while. I decided that I'd like to try to achieve the same thing, and so far have managed to resist buying yarn for three weeks. It is necessary though, as after the end of the last Stashalong, that lasted for four months, I went a bit bonkers and bought lots of yarn!

I've made my list of garments I want to knit over the next twelve months, and taken yarns out of my stash and stored them in the guest room wardrobe; I have already cleared the extra yarns from said wardrobe and it needs to be catalogued and stored this morning so I can do the ironing!!

One of my planned garments is the Central Park Hoodie that was popular with knitters last winter. I have the magazine and thought that I could knit the CPH from some Charisma Supreme Heather Aran from stash which I purchased from the Yorkshire Mohair Mill some *ahem* several years ago. It's a lovely cream pure wool yarn with little brown bits in it - perfect for a CPH hoodie I thought.

I dug the yarn out of stash yesterday to and it is a CPH failure already. I knitted a tension swatch and hand washed it as it is pure wool. On 5mm needles the tension is 15sts x 20 rows which is chunky if you ask me :evil: So I have to find a chunky pattern that I'll want to knit this yarn up into - not a problem in itself but in my mind it was destined to become a CPH. So now I have to find a substitute yarn.

I do have three 400g balls of Sirdar's long discontinued Highland Aran in a gorgeous Autumn Berry colour that was ordered specially to knit some garment or other - again more than several years ago, before Matthew was born - and it will make a superb CPH. It won't have those super little flecky bits that the Debbie Bliss Aran Tweed would have, but I'm knitting from stash. Right?

2 comments:

LoveAnna said...

Isn't it a bummer when your stash doesn't knit to the tension you want? I hope your highland Aran turns out to be perfect for a CPH.

I'm beginning to get the DT's from not buying yarn - it's soooo *hard*!!!!

Anonymous said...

Is that pile of yarn on the bed what you plan to knit in the next 12 Months?? When you're going to be on your teaching practice???? If so you're madder than me ;-)