In my short knitting life I have bought many balls and skeins and hanks of yarn.
I've fallen into some pretty awesome indie dyers company/commerce along the way.
Reading the About Us page over at Posh I found out they only began in 2006. I was a year-old knitter back then. And my Posh stash dates from their first year. I can't tell you how stoked I was to discover that. Though it's true that my purchasing was affected by travel and school, my love for Posh Yarns, and my gratitude and admiration of the couple that have brought Posh Yarns to the world, has never ceased.
Near Melbourne is another devoted knitter who has also fallen under the Posh Yarn spell.
She, like myself and I'm fairly certain all yarn lovers around the world, has accumulated a collection of yarns that were all beautiful, all desirous, all full of promise when originally purchased.
True, many knit for the pleasure of knitting. They are known as process knitters. And I expect that they might have a higher threshold for knitter's guilt than the other major sort of knitter - the project knitter.
Project knitters want to take lovely string and turn it, through the magic of two sticks, into something different. Something useful or lovely. Something practical or whimsical. Something, anything, other than the simple (if stunning) skein/ball/hank that it began life in the knitter's possession as.
So - what to do when the dew has evaporated off the yarn? When the beauty of the yarn has not faded, but the knitter's enthusiasm or ability to work with that particular yarn has gone?
SWAP IT!
When I was staying with my mother waiting for my partnership visa to first come through the local yarn shop closed. Naturally part of the process was a closing down sale.
I did not buy heaping mountains of yarn, tempted as I was. (Alex visited for three weeks and went with me to said store and was very supportive of my not buying the entire place out. He's good like that, sensible and able to share his sense without lecturing. You know, so that I think it's my choice?)
Anyway, I bought a goodly amount of yarn. Just not the right yarn for me.
I bought some worsted that wasn't quite my red nor really enough for anything I desperately wanted to make. I bought a sweater lot of DK yarn called 'Clay' though I love lime green.
And I did the same thing again when the partnership visa came through and I moved to NZ and a local yarn shop had a closing sale. I did it innocently, unknowingly because I hadn't come face to face with the realities of the previously not me yarn bought in the US. It also was before 2011 - the year of buying no yarn - and I didn't know then what I learned during that first year of yarn fasting, which is that I do not enjoy 8ply/double knitting yarns.
I got through not buying yarn in 2011 because I had a lot of yarn I liked very much.
I figured that I could get through not buying yarn in 2012 because I still have a lot of yarn I like very much.
However the guilt of owning a decent amount of perfectly lovely, good, quality yarn that I didn't like has been a problem since 2011. A greater problem indeed than the small irritation of not being able to give into my yarn magpie.
Having space taken up by yarn that I can find no desire to knit, no pattern to knit it up in, no idea to knit it up in, and, more important, no urge to find an idea or pattern really because I don't like the weight of the yarn, or the colour enough to get over that...it was causing me real worry.
Over in Melbourne it was causing that other Posh Yarn loving knitter worry as well. So when I thanked her for the wonderful swap we did last year (which has a finish item to it's credit now - my Leaflet cardi I showed you a while back) and said I'd be happy to do one in the future, she was keen.
Now, I think for this type of swap to work you do have to know yourself as a knitter. And have had some time prior where you didn't really have a handle on your knitting style and colour preference and desires so that a goodly amount of yarn that is lovely and nice but not your thing can build up.
Close shipping also made both of us very happy.
I have heard of the happiness caused by the yarn I sent off. It makes me happy to hear it.
Today I would like to share my absolute joy and delight with the yarn that I received. It's all sock yarn basically. Posh Yarns sock yarn. There is no way that this will cause me any guilt because I don't reckon it'll hang in the stash boxes too long.
It's making me have dirty thoughts. Like not doing anything in my queue that I planned to do to further my process knitter self's desire to have things made out of the pretty string that I have owned for far too long without turning into anything. Nothing salacious. Just more and worse non-monogamous knitting thoughts than usual.
This single skein, for instance, wants to be a green shawl. A rich, deep green shawl. Which I don't have. It wants to be a deep green shawl for me so badly it is trying to squeeze the other, planned shawls, with caked yarn ready to go, out of the way to become this necessary wardrobe item.
And this one:
I've been gifted the pattern I want to use it for. This is the one that will become Lenore. But minus the drapey sleeves because I don't think I have quite enough and I like slim line sleeves anyway. I've have the package since Tuesday and only just managed to put it in a stash bin, not the 'to be knit' bins. I might pull it back out for more fondling. I might pull it out to just 'swatch' it some.
Or I might steal the swift from work and wind the two skeins of this stuff up because I want legwarmers and will be needing them shortly. Not because I don't have a gift knit in progress, and two to start shortly. And certainly not because come May I expect to be doing sample knitting for another of Hunter's books and will have a deadline. These two skein into legwarmers - now! - simply because I'm smitten.
Even for a project knitter such as myself, who might feel edgy having so much more to include in the urge to KNIT.ALL.THE.THINGS. having more yarn I want to work with is a relief. It's lifted the stress of keeping yarn I don't want and been miraculous. Knowing it's gone to a good home where it won't be shut in a cupboard out of shame? That feels mighty awesome.
I even picked up some buttons today that might work with some of the new yarn that wants to be a self-designed cardi. With buttons, obviously, though I didn't realize that until I saw the buttons and thought of the yarn and felt faint in a rush of excitement. (It's the yarn at the top I'm talking about now, which I've decided looks like rose gold.)
Before you ask - yes, I still have some spare stuff I'm unsure about or that is DK. And I hope that we'll have another Mid-Winter Knit In and Craft Swap this year so that I can move it on to better homes.
