Reflections and Digressions on a Year of Stash Dieting

I often seem to get into things just ahead of a trend, or at least at the point of the arrowhead. When I started using rubber stamps, the only place I could get them was mail order catalogs. When I started to tat, there was one store where I could find real "tatting" thread. When I started frame knitting, the Knifty Knitters had not yet turned up in the local stores.

Maybe I need one of those think tanks to monitor me and see what is going to turn popular next.

I already know I'm a dog magnet. If the bathroom door is closed and both dogs are lying outside of it, my husband knows exactly where I am.

And both my husband and I are "traffic magnets", meaning if there is an empty store parking lot when we pull in, by the time we pull out, six cars have entered the lot. I used to think it was good timing. Now I'm starting to wonder if I should market it as a service.

Last year I started my stash diet meaning to turn some of the rosy pictures that danced in my head as I fondled yarn or thread into actual, real, physical objects. Most of those objects turned out to be socks, although I did get a couple of good knitted doilies in there, and a felted bag that I like a lot better than the ugly weaving the yarn started out to be.

I've really enjoyed the sensitivity I've gained towards my "gatherer" instinct. There is a deep satisfaction that comes with acquiring useful things, whether I am out picking blackberries, mosquito bites and bramble scratches and all, or stumbling across a cache of old knitting needles at a thrift store.

The problem, or maybe I should say the discomfort, comes when all I do is gather, and don't use. I don't believe in acquiring stuff as "dragon treasure". (Dragon treasure is the gigantic heap of stuff that dragons pile up, and then sleep on. They don't get any use out of the gilded armor or crowns or cups except as a glittery, lumpy bed.)

When I have stuff, and don't use it, even though I'm not sleeping on it, it turns into dragon-treasure lumps. Whether I keep an exact inventory or not, I know it's there. I know I'm not using it. Goodwill, my local Freecyle (tm) group, and the Salvation Army store often benefit when those things get too "lumpy".

I'm not sure I want to end my stash diet for fear I'll lose this sensitivity to when my stash is getting full of dragon-treasure lumps, gathered but not used. In fact, I'm even thinking of extending it to other things.

Thrifty Goodness

I love thrift stores, but they are as fatal to a stash diet as a specialty chocolate shop to a food diet.

Six balls of DMC Cebelia, size 10, in various pink shades, for 50 cents each. A little blue ball, 25 cents. A whole baggie of vintage tatting thread for 50 cents. Two size 1 (the 2.25mm size 1) dpns for 50 cents. A tube of five US size 3 dpns for 50 cents.

What am I going to do with it? I dunno, that's why it's called "stash".

PS, if you are in the US and haven't already, don't forget to vote!

Clouds Like Sheep

[Edited to add: welcome to readers of Samurai Knitter's blog! And if you haven't been there, see? See? I'm not the only maniac devotee of 0000 knitting needles!]
Autumn in Michigan very often seems to come overnight, as if someone had flipped a switch. We get these clouds that look like a flock of gray sheep, with little gaps of blue so you can see the sun you're missing.

Sunday after I picked up my county fair entries, I stopped at a farm that had had a huge sale, 25 open trailers of stuff. The leftovers were on three trailers by the side of the road, free for the taking. We had gone to the sale, so I stopped to see what was left, and came home with a 1961 Webster's New Collegiate dictionary, a pair of little silverplate teaspoons, three tinned-steel pie pans, and a stack of books, mostly Agatha Christie. There was some yarn, but it was acrylic, so it was easy to stay on my stash diet. I can hardly believe I've been on a stash diet for over eight months!

Yesterday, Monday, I read mysteries and realized I was coming down with a cold. The day seemed to pass very quickly, and I didn't get any knitting done. Before I knew it, it was bedtime, and I was trying to go to sleep with an itchy, leaking nose. (I hate that!)

These are a sure sign of fall, New England asters or Michaelmas daisies. I rescued several plants of these when I saw condominiums were going in where they were growing. They come in shades of pinkish-purple and bluish-purple, but cameras always seem to register them on the pink side. This year I had a few plants come up from seed. Some of them came up in the lawn and will need to be moved so I don't mow them down.

Today I want to get up to town and do some grocery shopping. If that leaves me with any energy, maybe knitting after that.

And a few weird words about illness and behavior!

When I was a hort. student at Michigan State University, we learned about a disease of the onion fly. The disease organism would infect this fly, which normally landed on the ground at the base of the onion plant to lay its eggs, and change its behavior. Instead of crawling around at the base of onion plants, the fly would crawl up to the very tippy-top of a plant, and then die up there, still clinging to the very top of the plant. And then the disease would spread to other onion flies!

Have you ever noticed that people with colds do the same thing? "Oh, I feel terrible -- I better go to work." Or the store. Ah-choo! I think the cold affects our behavior!

Happy Birthday Shopping

Yesterday (Thursday) was our son's seventh birthday. Wednesday I went out to do some birthday shopping for him. I like to shop at thrift stores, both to support their charitable missions, and because they are often a great source for kids' books at reasonable prices.

First I found an older Boye metal tatting shuttle, still on the card, with the narrow hook that I love.

Then I found this:
THUD! I fell right off my stash diet. Two 50 gram skeins of Regia Stretch and two of Regia "Crazy Color", for $1 each???

I did remember to buy birthday presents. And my son had a great time opening them and reading and playing with them. He even got to see his dad, who had a pass from his second two-week annual training of the summer to come home for the day. They went out and played cards in the evening, then we went up to the park and he played on the merry-go-round (or carousel) and with the other kids he found there.

And I even got to sit at the park and knit a couple rows of my socks. This led one of the little girls at the park to ask, "Is that your mom over there sewing those socks?" to which my son replied, "That's my mom, and she's knitting, actually."

A seven-year-old who can tell sewing and knitting apart? Awww, I think this one's a keeper!

Bits and Pieces of Bits and Pieces

Brown Thrasher News: Three hatchlings in there for sure, mom and dad erupting from the top of the rosebush like phoenixes (phoenixi?) to go find more more more food for them.

A wild turkey walked right up to our chain link fence this afternoon. It was almost as tall as the four-foot fencing. Truffles about went bananas!

Weird News: We came home from science camp to find the back-of-the-washer mousetrap on the floor in the front room. In pieces. I said to my son, "Do you think this trap caught a mouse?"

"Yes," he said.

"Where do you think the mouse is?" I asked.

"Inside the dog?" he guessed matter-of-factly.

Ewwwwwww!

I've been to two yarn stores in two days. Yesterday I went to Lizzie Ann's Wool Co. on 8th Street, in Holland, Michigan, and I resisted. Today I went to the Sewing Center, also on 8th Street (too many other errands to go yesterday), and oh, NO! Oh, yes! Finally, a store that sells the Plymouth Encore Colorspun that I knitted my favorite socks out of!

So, I, ah, bought a ball of purple. Does it count as going off my stash diet if I immediately started knitting a pair of socks with it?

And underneath there, my other breakage of my stash diet: yet another dishcloth, started with odds and ends of crochet cotton I bought at an estate sale Saturday. For $2.10, I brought home more pearl cotton, nice to make fingerloop braids out of, several balls of size 30 six-cord tatting thread in colors, and of course the crochet cotton. Most of it was in good shape, but I did throw out a little twist of green that shredded as I tried to knit it. Which I didn't notice until I had knitted two or three rows.

Last night I went to my West Michigan Lace Group meeting with the lacemaking items I picked up from a SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) friend. His wife passed on this spring, and he wanted her bobbin lace things to go on being used and enjoyed. I don't "do" bobbin lace myself, but several of the group members do, and I was pretty sure they would find homes. He and I also talked about the group keeping some bobbins and so on, to make a kit for members who might want to try bobbin lace.

As you might guess, bobbin lace equipment is not something you dash into Wal-Mart and toss into your cart. So this was a windfall for our bobbin lacemakers, and I know they really appreciate it.

And if something unthinkable should happen, my husband better do the same (offer it to people who will really use it) with my room full of fiber stuff! I'd have to come back from beyond to straighten him out if it ended up in the dumpster.

Thread Binge -- Naughty Stash Dieter!

I am all excited to post my "Off My Stash Diet" thread binge, and Blogger has another breakdown. Pooh!

I really tried to stay on my stash diet Monday night -- really I did! But I had friends/enablers telling me things like, "Look at all that crochet thread you used up," and "Don't even try" (to stay on a stash diet in the face of all this beautiful thread). And (urp) I fell right off.

Kathy had some wonderful books. She had copies of Sharon Miller's lace knitting book, which I really covet. But at $55, it was out of my budget. I have to admit, that is one book I would almost go back to working full-time for!

I bought a set of Lacis 5-0 knitting needles, and a set of their 4" 4-0 needles. Some silky-feeling deep purple size 5 Coats Opera. A ball of Oren Bayan size 50 thread (equivalent to about a size 30 tatting thread) in softly-shaded blues. Two balls of the Japanese Olympus thread. Two balls of Valdani pearl cotton, made in Romania, in incredible colors: one goes from deep forest, almost-black, green, to pale pastel green, and the other ball is green, black, and a purplish-blue. Last I bought two balls of the Oren Bayan size 70, one in a lovely silvery gray, and the other in an unusual blue and white.

It's been fairly easy to stay on my stash diet in places like Hobby Lobby and Michael's. The selection there is nothing to tempt me: let's see, tatting thread in black, white, ecru, shaded pastels, green, and red. Have that. In all sizes. But Kathy's thread bins, ooohhhhh.

Radical Notion

I'm going to try to do something "radical" this year:

I'm going to try to get through the whole year without adding to my yarn/thread/fiber stash!

There, I said it right out in public.

I have lots of tatting thread, new and vintage. Really lots. More than that, even. If I tatted every waking hour of every day this year, while my floors disappeared under Legos and fluffs of dog hair, I am pretty sure I would still have plenty of tatting thread left over. So I am going to try to resist buying more. Can I do it? I don't know. But I've made a pretty public declaration, so I am definitely going to try!

And not just tatting thread. I have weaving yarn of all weights and fibers, some of which I've had for [mumble mumble] years. Some of which is perfectly suitable for knitting, now that I think of it. Time to use some of that up, and make some of the things that danced in my head when I picked it up.

I have knitting yarn, not the opulent stashes of some knitters, but still. Bags of it, storage drawers of it.

My husband said, when I confessed this weird notion to him, "You certainly have enough to keep you busy." Okay, he doesn't understand! When I pick up a ball of gorgeous hand-dyed fine perle cotton, in a colorway I'll almost certainly never see again, I'm not thinking about "keeping busy." I'm thinking of the gorgeous things I could tat with it. I'm thinking of the fun I could have.

Adding to my stash is all about wonderful creative possibilities. My goal in making this decision is to try and realize some of those creative possibilities. To get them out of my head and into the real world.

Meanwhile, here is something in the real world:



The top-down hat outgrew my dpns. So it became a double-knitted object. I had to use 14 inch knitting needles, and my metal ones felt heavy. So I tried the Chinese bamboo needles I bought on eBay last year. At first, the yarn didn't slide very smoothly.

I turned to my secret weapon. This is something called "Super Film -- Micron Abrasive Film," made by Houston Art, Inc., that I bought at Michael's. Every time I finish working with one needle, I take the Super Film to the free needle. After several rows, both needles are getting smooth and glossy. Now the yarn slides as smoothly as an aluminum needle, and I don't have the weight dragging at my wrists, so I am happy.