I’m organized! Totally together! I’m planning ahead, and starting earl(ier than I usually do)! I’m SUPER KNITTER!!!! Well, okay, I won’t go overboard. But, I did add all my test knits to my queue and matched almost all of them up with yarn. I dug the needles out for the first few and put them with the yarn. I’m going to knit like the wind, weave in my ends as I go, and block stuff as soon as it’s off the needles. I’m going to sew on buttons, dang it! I’m going to channel some of OrangeSmoothie’s speed knitting mojo and get the proverbial ‘er done!

Check out my queue. If you dare. No, don’t–I’m embarrassed. Okay, do it, but don’t look at any of the due dates.

I cast on for one yesterday. It’s the Lancashire Dream cardigan by Gabrielle Danskknit. Being a test, it’s not published yet, but I will share a teaser pic! I’m making the 4 yo size for the little. I decided to use the same yarns I used to make the wifey’s Quicksilver so that they can coordinate. It’s going to be really stinking cute. It’s going to have stripes in reverse stockinette on the top and non-reversed solid color stockinette on the bottom. It’s a top down raglan design.

 

You can tell I like that sort of color combination as it’s pretty similar to the mason jar cozy I made, also in the picture, at least 10+ years ago.

So far, I’m very happy with how the sweater is turning out.

In other news, I stumbled into quite the yarn haul a few days ago! I happened to see a freecycle email come through from a person who was giving away three garbage bags full of yarn. Well, if you know me at all, you know I can’t resist a bargain. What better bargain is there than free? So I sent her a response throwing my hat in the ring right away. We emailed back and forth for a bit and eventually agreed I could pick it up the next afternoon. The next afternoon, I already had plans to knit with a new friend I met on ravelry, so I took her along with me to pick up the yarn. We had a lovely conversation with the woman giving the yarn away–turns out she’s moving in a few months and is downsizing–and then took it all back to my friend’s house. We spread it all out on the floor and sorted through it. It was the most yarny fun I’ve had since the legendary Goodwill windfall of 2015! There was sock yarn, worsted yarn, bulky Lopi yarn, wool, alpaca, cotton, silk, blends…in short, a little bit of everything except straight up acrylic. It ran the gamut from very old stuff to new and nice stuff. I’ve started logging it in ravelry but it’s going to be a long job. Much of it is unlabeled so I need to make some guesses about what it might be, weight, yardage, etc. At least I don’t need to do any burn tests as the yarn giver (I think that should be her official title) didn’t include anything 100% acrylic.

It dawns on me now that I should have taken pictures of it spread out on the floor in all its glory, but I didn’t. You’ll have to make do with a smattering of stash pics! Here are some of the highlights so far:

And much, much, MUCH more! She also included several WIPs, many of which were socks. I ripped some of them out but saved a few. There’s a pair of sock toes started that I really like, so I’ll pick up the stitches on them and see if I can finish them up!

I think it’s safe to say that I have my work cut out for me. First, finish all these damn test knits! Second, find something to do with all this yarn! Happy knitting!