It is surprising just how much time I spend round cats. I didn’t know until I had to knit this away from felines, as Julia is allergic to them…

Eleanor from Knit Nottingham had kittens about this scarf (sorry, couldn’t resist!) because I stashbusted some Malabrigio (sp?) and Noro for it. It should have been charged at replacement rates, but cos Julia has been so nice about stocking AVI fundraising scarves (3 kinds, check ‘em out) I made it at mates rates, with no intention of replacing them. Using purple so thoroughly for C&G has left me a tad jaded, which will pass, but the whole point about stashbusting is using stuff that otherwise will sit there. There’s also King Cole Riot, doll wool, felting wool and lovely embellishing yarn, but no one piped up in their defence. Jazz gave me the Malabrigio and I was so thrilled, it feels great, it is a really lovely midnight to electric purple and…it was too good to use! Nooooooooooooooo! I managed to use a bit for some C&G embellishing but it felt like putting the Derby winner to hauling coal…so when Julia

wanted a purple scarf I leapt at it. And dug out the Noro while I was at it! You can see the lovely flecky goodness of that at the bottom of the second photo.

And I made Julia laugh telling her about all this – who knew making a scarf could be so hard? I guess it comes back to the two kinds of stash, the ‘bought because it is beautiful and must wait for a perfect project’, and the ‘bought because it will bring beauty into any project’. I really didn’t enjoy the feeling of trying to think up a project good enough for those two superyarns, and seeing Julia so pleased while  making space for the turquoise felting mixes that are next in line, definitely equals that mythical value.

More on the stashbusting front – want to see what the inner reels of 18 kilometres (10 miles in old money) of thread  look like?

Oh yes………

I have four of these fishing tackle boxes, and they used to be full of thread.

Now two are full of thread and two are handy embellishing lengths and tapestry/canvaswork wools.

These are going to a better place – a carrier bag marked weaving bobbins, for when I do mixed media entanglements, and need to keep track of many ends.

O happy day!

Advertisement