I realized as I was doing this, that I have a LOT of yarn. A LOT. And having my husband watching while I was doing this, now HE knows just how much I have, too. I think I'll need to lay off the yarn buying for a while. Heh. I'm okay with that - it's gotten to the point where I almost feel overwhelmed by the stash - there's just too much of it that I love and want to work with to keep buying yarn. It meant I went to NH Sheep and Wool last weekend and bought a grand total of 3 skeins of yarn - two to make hats for the husband and daughter, one to send off to my secret pal.
I'll start with some of my tools, though, since I've got a lot of those too.
First off, my needle cases. I got these from Crippenworks Needlecases, and I love them
Here's all four of them - Circulars on the left, crochet hooks and DPNs in the middle, and straights on the right.
The insides of a couple of the cases.
My swift
My ball winder. The dresser that it is attached to is where most of my yarn lives.
Most, but not all of my books.
And now, the yarn. On all the yarn pics, if you click through to Flickr, I've added notes and stuff to the pictures too.
This is my collection of ends and bits and bobs. I do actually go back to these for some projects, which is why I keep them around. There's all kinds of stuff here - cotton, wool, alpaca, silk. If it's natural, I'll knit with it, pretty much.
These are my one-offs, those single balls that you acquire either as gifties or at swaps, or because they were so divine you have to have them. I'm sure you all know what I mean. My favorites in the batch are the purple boucle and the silk my friend D brought for me from Japan.
Here's all the sock yarn - Clockwise, from the top left, Schaefer Anne, Fleece Artist merino, Running Wild cormo wool, Great Adirondack silk/wool, three colors from Sunshine Yarns on etsy, Cherry Tree Hill supersock, Koigu, Fleece Artist merino, and the few balls of Regia and Kroy. Lots of sock yarn. The koigu is officially no longer stash yarn, since I ended yesterday's session by winding it up and starting a new sock with it. Since I took this, I've added two new skeins of Sunshine Yarns - one in the Ravenclaw colorway for a friend, and another all for me!
This is my current collection of project yarn - I'm still stuck in baby knitting hell, and all of this is for that. Jaeger Matchmaker (car seat bunting), Kareoke (baby sweater), Cascade superwash (Widget sweater), Jaeger baby Merino (baby sweaters), Kertzer Butterfly Super 10 (Baby Surprise Jacket, if my figuring for stockinette stitch works).
Most of the rest of my project quantity yarn collection - Dale for ladybug sweater, Fleece Artist Thrummed mitten kit, with extra skein for hat, Alpaca from New Mexico, Mostly Merino yarn, Cotton Comfort mill ends, Touch of Twist silk-merino laceweight, Frog Tree Alpaca. My favorite out of this batch is the NM alpaca - because we got to meet the alpacas from whom the yarn came, and toured the spinning mill where it is made up in Ruidoso when we were out visiting my MiL last winter. It was a really neat side trip. I'm most excited about the Fleece Artist thrummed mittens kit that I just got.
This is my Sea colors yarn. Solar dyed in sea water, no photograph can convey the depth and pure gorgeousness of this yarn. The blue is destined to be a sweater for myself. The pink and green I bought just to have.
This last one isn't technically stash yarn, since, as you can see, I've started the project. But I love this yarn sooooo much, I had to include it - it's a lambswool cashmere blend, in a fantastic shade of true red with all different colors speckled into it - blue, yellow, purple, white. It may be my favorite yarn I've ever seen or worked with. The kicker is that I can not remember who makes it.
Well, that's my stash. There's actually more, but it's pretty boring collection of wools in natural colors, and I couldn't bring myself to haul those last bits of it out of storage yesterday afternoon.
The other thing I realized when I was pulling this all together is that I like to buy yarn when I travel, which means that a lot of the yarns in my stash have stories to them, even if it's just "Oh yeah, I found that yarn in this little store in Cleveland when I went out there for that server upgrade..." It's like a mini personal history.
