Stash Busting Fail?

Last year I promised to attack my growing mountain of yarn with zeal hoping to reduce it to a few odds and sods. To reduce, reuse and recycle as the creed goes. Alas, I failed and I know why. When you are in a creative pursuit you need to avail yourself of resources which inspire you and poring over yarns I had already used for other purposes was completely uninspiring and unmotivating.

Here's a catalogue however of my knitted achievements for 2014.

1 x Mug Hug. 

I have a lovely friend called Mrs. D who sent me a gorgeous Christmas decoration for our tree in 2013 and as it coincided with the year I was hosting Christmas with my family I wasn't able to knit her a decoration in reply. So I thought she'd like a Mug Hug which I knitted in Navy and Red from existing supplies. Tick for reuse. Alas I forgot to take a photo of it. If you are a member of Ravelry, the pattern is available here.

1 x KOGO beanie.

KOGO is a knitting charity which stands for Knit One Give One. It is also plays on the knitter's parlance of Knit One (K1) Purl One (P1), pattern terminology. The idea is that they will provide free and easy patterns on their website which you can use and then hopefully knit something for yourself and then something for their charity.

I have rarely knitted something for myself. I usually have someone else in mind as it pushes me along with mental deadline to deliver it to the person. New babies, Mothers' Day, friends birthdays. Most of the time it is babies, lots and lots of babies and my own babies alas, reaching the age soon where they will start rejecting my knits as daggy.

Anyway, I knit(ted) this very easy 8 ply beanie for Mum's birthday a couple of years ago

and then finally, with a bit of leftover 10 ply acrylic black I knitted this beanie from the ribbed 8ply beanie pattern on their website to give to the charity. Here is my son Jared modelling it.

Another tick for reuse as the Black Acrylic was originally bought to do the mane for the Connemara Pony I knitted for a friend a couple of years ago. I decided this was the best yarn for the job as KOGO recommend choosing conservative colours (having seen the garish knits in the collection box I know why) and I agree, when you are homeless or doing it tough, you really don't want to draw attention to yourself.  I figured Acrylic would be easier to care for than a natural yarn that would demand hand washing in tepid water. I also decided the rib pattern as opposed to the plain knit for I did for mum would be warmer.

1 x Scarf for Lucinda

This was another yarn from my stash which was used for the Papa Bear in the Three Bears project. I asked Lucinda if she would like a scarf for winter. She was fairly nonplussed about the idea but agreed. Not content to knit her a plain scarf I stumbled across a free pattern from my Daily Knitting e-mail subscription. Oddly it was in the Spinning Daily promotional e-mail they sent me as the Spin Off magazine's free pattern. It was by Adriana Schoenberg and called simply "Undulating Scarf" pattern. You can also find this pattern on Ravelry here as I later discovered.

I decided to do the pattern as a 2 x repeat instead of a 3 x repeat as it was for a 6 year old neck not an adult neck. Adriana's pattern was beautifully written including a stitch count at the end which was very handy. I have continued with her sage stitch count idea for other patterns I am knitting now.

This is definitely a pattern I would consider using again. Happy to say my stash yarn from Papa Bear is no more and I have a very happy scarf recipient. Tick for reuse.

So, as you can see, it wasn't a tremendous busting of the stash but I certainly did whittle away a few balls of yarn.