Flash Your Stash 2006

Everyone saw what my stash looked like one year ago, right? If you didn't, then scroll down to see yesterday's post. It's the first picture....picture.....as in singular. This year there's such a mish-mash of stuff and none of it's really organized (that will change when I move it to the house). So I'm not going to try to identify any of it. If anyone wants to know what something is, please feel free to leave a comment and ask and/or make me an offer for something. I'll tell you if it's something I don't want to part with.

We'll begin the tour this year in my knitting/craft/computer room. Here's my old chest of drawers that holds what I thought was most of my knitting stuff.


Drawer #1 (the unopened one) holds mainly old bags from my LYS when I get around to unloading them.

Drawer #2


Drawer #3


Drawer #4 (#5 below this one holds my oldest WIP that will probably never be finished in my lifetime.)


And now for the closet stash. I was really amazed at how much I had piled in there. I remembered it all, but I didn't remember it being this much. Of course if you only buy one or two balls of yarn at a time, it tends to build up.


And now for the closer looks.


...and again.....


...and again.


Moving downstairs to the living room. This is my old nightstand. The top drawer holds most of my needles that aren't in use and the bottom drawer is my beading/stitchmarker supplies/random tools.


But the middle drawer is the catch-all for the scraps of yarn as I finish stuff if I think there's enough left to merit saving.


And finally, my winding/knitting station. Kindly ignore the dead houseplants, but see the few balls of yarn and my kitchen scale to weigh the sock yarn into two balls.


And I think that's everything! Any questions....comments....concerns...

the stash in retrospect

A year ago, I was fairly new to the knitty boards. I heard about flash-your-stash day and did it on a whim. Remember this?


And that was the whole of my stash. Pretty pathetic. You'll see the current stash tomorrow (or possibly shortly after midnight). And it's going to be pic-intensive. Bring a beverage.

Here we have the completed simple stripes socks in Storm. These were originally going to be for my secret pal, but when she requested something else (a sock yarn that I happened to have in my stash) these socks became the property of my church's DCE who originally ridiculed my knitted socks (why spend a month of time and $20 on something that you can buy in a 10-pack at walmart for $2.50?), but started to lust after this pair. She got them last Sunday.


And now for the puppy pictures! Here is the little poodle, Toffee, ready for her close-up.


And she's just as adorable when she's asleep!


Now for two happy announcements. First, my second box from my SP came today....or I should say that it came on the 23rd and the mailman forgot to put a reminder in my mailbox that it was at the office to pick up. So I got it today when I went in to give my 30-day notice.

A great bag for my sock projects....I adore bags. I think have about 1500 of them and only use them for specific things.


And inside was all this. There's two kinds of coffee (hazelnut and italian roast), a huge square of dark chocolate (yum!), a set of size 2 dpns, 2 different sock yarns (love love love the sockatta), and a cute little case full of what I'm assuming are handmade stitchmarkers (3 different kinds).


Here's a close-up of the stitchmarkers. The ones in the upper left all have different words on them, like live, laugh, create, imagine, etc. On the right are 3 little flip-flops, and the bottom left are four gorgeous glass beaded ones. Simply lovely. One can never have too many stitch markers.


And the other happy thing is that I finally closed on my house at 3 PM. Amen, hallelujiah and praise be! Here's my key on top of my current Jaywalker.

Better now...

After 14 hours of sleep, my mind is refreshed and I'm not a gibbering mess. What a relief.

Drove to Carroll today to meet my mom and one of her friends and give her Toffee (the cute poodle puppy). So that's a load off my mind and Phoebe is very relieved to be the only dog in the house once again. Although she's being very sassy at the moment.

I've got only two goals tonight. One is to finish the socks for my DCE to I can give them to her tomorrow. The second is to get the second....pathetically small....package together for my downstream SP. I really need to get that mailed off soon or she'll think she's been flaked on.

If anyone needs me tonight, I'll be knitting and engrossed in Regency House Party and Voyager: Season 7.

I feel the need to vent...

I would really really love it if everyone involved in making it possible for me to buy a house could just sit down in one place with me present and tell me everything, everything I need to know. What stuff needs to be done by when, what needs to be signed and turned in, where I need to meet people...on and on.

To start at the beginning, I got a call from the bank last week saying they needed my two paystubs again because the end date had been cut off the first ones I gave them, and they needed my college diploma, and I needed to bring them proof of homeowners and flood insurance because according to them my house is in a flood plain and they can't give me a loan unless I've got flood insurance. That was last Thursday, before I worked the weekend. So today, after working the weekend and Tuesday night and last night, I headed to my insurance agent to cancel my renters insurance and get the other two. My agent tells me that I can't have proof of homeowners today because he's got to the house and take pictures. And they can't give me flood insurance without the elevation certificate even though they know that FEMA messed up and the house isn't in a flood plain and yet my bank is making me get flood insurance to get my loan.

So I go to the bank to give the lady what I do have and tell her what's going on. She's on lunch break, so I've got to wait half an hour for her to get back. In the meantime, I'm going over some disclosure papers that the actual lending firm sent me, but they didn't tell me what to do with them. So I'm merrily signing and initialing away since I assume I'll have to turn them in. Lady comes back from lunch, tells me that the payslips I've printed out with the dates intact might not work because there isn't evidence of what website I got them from. Ok, I'm at 22 hours awake at this point and not happy and about *this* close to tears. I plop this huge sheaf of disclosure statements on the desk to ask her some questions on pages I hadn't signed because I was so fuzzy. And she said "Oh, you don't have to turn those in. They're for your personal files." Grrrr. At this point I do breakdown, just because I'm so sick of not being told anything. And I've got tears streaming down my face just because I'm so tired and I'm blubbering and trying to tell the lady about the insurance part and she's about as sympathetic as a piece of toast....actually....the toast might have been one up on her. So I grabbed my stuff and walked out telling her I'd be back when I'd had some sleep and gotten answers.

Came home, called my agent and she didn't know where the elevation certificate was either, but wanted to set a time for the final walkthrough and closure. So we did that.

Did I mention that we're exactly one week from closing?!?! Would have been nice to be given the heads-up on this back in March when I first bid on the house.

And if you've made it to the end of this, you deserve a cookie. I don't have any, but I've got puppy pictures! She's my mom's new poodle that I picked up from the breeder this morning and she's adorable. No name yet....I'm waiting for Mom to see the pictures I sent and tell me what to call her.

I feel like a slacker....

Anyone else reading the Yarn Harlot's blog might feel the same way. This woman can whip out Norwegian sweaters like nobody's business.

The thing that has made me feel like a slacker though is her most recent accomplishment. She finished a pair of Jaywalker socks in about a week and a half. The fastest I've done a single sock is 2 weeks and that was on size 3s. These are on size 1s! Gah!

What's up with that?

I really wish I could figure out why, on my nights off, I can't stay awake anymore. I used to have no problem. I'd come home from work, sleep all day, get up and eat dinner, then be up all night knitting and watching movies. I just can't do it anymore. I'll get up by 5 or 6, then by 11:30 or midnight, I'm completely zonked and fall asleep on the couch! Then I have to try to sleep most of the day too so I can be awake at work that night.

Maybe I just need to catch up on my sleep this weekend. Oh wait! I won't be able to do that because I'm picking up a poodle puppy for my mom on Friday morning and she's probably going to want to go out every couple of hours. Lovely.

FO x2

First off, I got the minisweater totally done. The button is finally sewn on and I wore it to SoP last night.

Next.....

The alpaca blanket is complete! It's a modified version of the Ombre Alpaca Blanket from Last Minute Knitted Gifts. I used yarn from a local alpaca farm, went up to size 15 needles, and cut the number of stitches down to in the 160s. This thing is huge! I didn't realize how big it was until I got it off the needles. It'll be great for snuggling up in front of the fireplace at my new house.

Phoebe likes it too.


And speaking of the house....only 2 weeks until I take possession!

major update....but no pictures

So here's the rundown.
-Alpaca Ombre blanket just needs the last stripe and it's done. Might get it done tonight and if not tonight, then probably by tomorrow.
-Simple stripes socks....ready to turn the second heel. So far the stripes are working out to make an identical pair of socks.
-Branching Out...knit two more repeats on it this morning after I got up. I need to get back to doing at least one repeat before I go to bed/when I get up.
-Mini-sweater....needs the button attached. I'll do this today so I can wear it to sit and knit tomorrow.
-Leaf Lace shawl and Hermione mittens have had nothing done.

I helped a coworker bind off a baby blanket last night, and I'm meeting her today to pick out yarn for the next project. *sigh* Oh for the days when there was no stash! Speaking of stash....

I've given up buying yarn for lent. I think I'm also giving up starting new projects...at least until the ones on the needles are done. And as soon as the striped socks are done, I'll start new ones. Socks don't count. Be quiet.

Everything's going well with the house. Only 2 1/2 more weeks until I take possession. I've already got the paint for my bedroom and the kitchen and dining room. Bought a living room set this last weekend, so my house won't be completely bare of furniture.

And I guess that's it. I promised the pup a good long walk today since I've pretty much kept her cooped up all winter. I'm such a lazy bum!

Boo....

So the neighbors didn't move out after all. Or rather, only one of them did. But I did go over and have a nice little chat with one of the guys about keeping their bass turned down during the day. They've been really considerate about that since. And....they've started leaving me a parking place open! Talk about progress. Maybe my last 6 weeks here won't be a pain after all.

Still knitting away. After about 6 false starts trying to find the right place in the colors, the second striped sock is started. If they were for me, I'd have just let them be fraternal, but I don't know how the person I'm gifting them to feels about matching socks. So they're going to be identical....or as close as I could get them.