Late Report

Today's Completed Projects
Tonight I put two more scarves in the craft fair box. One is a mile a minute style I worked up in a bouclé yarn and the other an attempt at the Peek-a-Boo Skinny Scarf pattern from the 2007 Crochet-A-Day calendar.


Thrift Stores; Creative Financing for all your AS needs.
Not many of the thrift stores around town carry yarn. There's one that is pretty close to me that carries a little yarn and sometimes has patterns. At the one closest to my home I've been told they carry yarn sometimes, but they keep it behind the counter and you have to get there the minute they open up and I'm just not into fighting little old ladies to get in the door at nine o'clock sharp. There is one store though, for some reason they seem to get ALL the yarn in town and they carry 95% of it at one particular store in an older neighborhood. I went there Monday because I was in that area of the city and being Monday, their stuff was 25% off. Whenever I get downtown I try to stop in there if I feel up for the jaunt and though I was hurting I was not totally worn out and it was still early in the day and it was Monday after all and 25% off, who can argue with that? Sure enough, they had yarn. They had more pattern books there than they normally carry but most of them were mixed crafting books and I didn't want to take the time to thumb through them all to see what crochet patterns were there so I focused on yarn. I picked up almost all the rug yarn they carry for my crochet buddy who has been amassing it to make a rug for her mother. I also found a roll of poly cord in a pretty gold color that she was excited about. Something about trying a purse with it.


For myself, I found a skein of red worsted weight to add to a scrap granny project I'm saving yarns for. I'm planning on doing a red/white/pink themed granny. I found the bouclé that I used for the mile-a-minute scarf above. I picked up a country rose and a winter white worsted weight because the price was too good (especially with 25% off) to pass it by. I also found 3 pearl 1 1/2" buttons to add to my rapidly growing pile. Guess we'll need to add BAS (button acquisition syndrome) to the growing list of acronyms because I'm always scouting the thrift stores for buttons for projects. After paying $5.00 for one button in the size I needed at a fabric store I decided to start looking for buttons on the cheap as well.

That's all the current from this crochet addict's life. Tomorrow my friend is stopping by and we'll be doing some listing of items on EBay (yes, there will be some yarn listed there; specifically a bunch of Bernat Galaxy and some Phentex boa yarn so if you're interested email me and I'll let you know where to go look). I hope all is well in your little corner of the net tonight. We've just had thunderstorms move through and so this girl is ready to go sleep in the rain.

NuMei and Others

For some folks purchasing crochet materials isn't a financial challenge though I can't say I know many who have enough disposable income to let go of 20 or 30 dollars for a skein of yarn. At least not in person. LOL I have been told they are out there though. Out there sort of like pixies or fairies or trolls under bridges if you ask me.

For the rest of us NuMei (http://www.numei.com/index.htm) is a wonderful and reasonably priced alternative to some of those higher end yarns. I was looking for a reasonable ribbon yarn to use for a project from Doris Chan's new book, Amazing Crochet Lace when I stumbled upon this on sale at NuMei. It's called Fluid ribbon yarn and the color I chose is Italian Plum. You can find samples of the colors here: http://www.numei.com/fluid.htm
I fell for it right off and the price is so reasonable ($13.90 for 10 balls) I was able to purchase enough to make the project I had in mind at about a third (or better) of what it would have cost me at any of the other sites I had looked at and even in the stores I'd been searching in. They have a variety of yarns with prices beginning in the $8 to $10 dollar range and going up from there. Mind you, this is for packs of ten balls per pack. It's definitely making it hard for me to curb my YAS this season!

A friend of mine and her girlfriend raided the local thrift store today and she came by to show me her loot. She is picking up odds and ends for a scrap yarn afghan and today she found exactly what she needed. LOL! Bear in mind this is a friend that I hooked on crochet. I actually think it was the combination of her other friend exposing her to it (and nagging at her for years to try doing it) and me exposing her to the possibilities and endless projects she can do if she just learned to crochet. After watching her friend for years and me for a couple she succumbed. Guess they should post signs up not only at stores but at crocheters homes as well warning of the possibility of addiction by osmosis!

Another site I frequent is Smiley's yarns. They have a $40.00 minimum which isn't hard to do because the prices are so great you can't stop yourself from filling up. I cannot count the number of times I've gone there and just blown my yarn budget in a couple hours of browsing. http://www.pagelinx.com/cgi-shopper/loadpage.cgi/smileysyarns/ezshopper?user_id=8600-20070215&file=index.htm
I love this place! I've never had a problem with any of their products and their shipping is lightening fast.

For yarns, those are my two usual suspects although there are other places that I keep an eye out for great sales so I can splurge when they occur.

Snow Crochet

Winter has finally come to my area and I'm cuddling up in a crochet mood. The weather forecasters started out predicting a goodly snowfall which has dwindled over the last few days to more like a smattering. Disappointing as I love to have at least one good snow a year.

Do you ever find that you've got way more projects in your head than you've got time to do? Sometimes you think you'll never get everything done that you'd like to do. Or even that you'd like to learn. When I get done with a project I always have that "take a breath" moment where I don't crochet, I simply relax, look through patterns and consider which projects I want to add to my list. Then I start to feel guilty about adding more projects because I have all these other projects that I need to finish which brings on a sort of paralysis and I can't pick up projects that are in need of finishing but won't allow myself to start a new item. The paralysis lasts sometimes only days; the longest it lasted was about three weeks. For the last couple of years I have been forging on and starting new projects, finishing a few of the pigs that I still had sitting I have a doily I set aside two years ago with eight rows to finish on it. How bad is that? I picked it up and now have four more rows left to finish. My New Year's resolution was to get all those pigs cleared out and so I've tried to focus on getting them out of the way before I will let myself start anything new.

I have also been doing a bit of stash busting, using up stash to just make scarves, hats and small bags. I'm planning on splitting the cost of a booth at a local craft fair with a friend and selling my crochet there this fall. Stash busting projects are
earmarked for the craft fair.

I tried telling myself I wouldn't Buy any new yarns until I'd used up some of what I have, but oh, the temptation has already been too much. I went to the thrift store the other day and picked up a bunch of cones of beautiful yarns. The largest cone is a royal blue and black chenille looking yarn, not thick, very fine but gorgeous. I also got a burgandy acrylic, a cone of Serenaide, a cone of white acrylic and a small cone of light blue acrylic. I bought a bag of yarn that contained some ww acrylics in pastel colors that I'd been looking for to use on the granny afghan project I posted pictures of the squares for in January. Inside that bag I found two small skeins of Red Heart cotton in a burgandy color. How old is that yarn?!? I never even knew Red Heart made cotton! It will go nicely with a partial cone of variegated that has a burgandy in it. This cone is a particularly difficult color combination to match up with any success. Really I've TRIED to be good but that old YAS bug has me by the tail. So, cold weather coming in will help me with all these condundrums because it's too cold to be out looking for yarns, I can cuddle up and get some projects out of the way and begin new ones soon.

Hankerings - Stash & Yarn Acquisition

Introduction

My hobby has, of necessity, been fed through what I like to refer as The Poor Woman's Guide to Crochet. Through the Grace of God and a deeply held conviction in faith I have never been unable to do whatever I chose to be doing. Life is a simple act of faith and if you can grasp how just being given the next morning can be proof of that faith, then you will truly live. Meantime, it takes a lot of paying attention in order to do it all. It takes making the effort to go that extra step, it means just having enough faith to keep putting one foot in front of the next, to walk into that thunderstorm and know that while you may not escape the rain, you will survive the drenching.

My blogspace today will entail explaining how I continued to create within the realms and confines of poverty, or lack of time, or whatever reared it's ugly head for the day. My Labels area will explain any acronyms and terms that I think need clarification so if you are unfamiliar with a term check there. Outside of that, any other terms or anything else you might need explained, feel free to contact me via the Comments link at the end of each posting.

Hankerings
Stash & Acquisition

The topic recently came up about yarn stashes and how creative we crafters get in finding places to keep ours. Living alone means that I don't have to be creative in hiding it from any One in particular, but I still have to give thought to where it will sit. How will it function, where is its place in the house, or how will I function, interact with it? How best to create an environment where it's accessible for me, readily at hand without looking so. A large part of creation with fiber is compelled by a desire for the tactile and whether we are touching lives as mothers, as artists, as women or as crocheters, be it acrylic, fur or cotton slub the need is as pressing as the next breath, because it's a deep passion that infuses our souls. In part, it is definition of ourselves.

Crochet is a part of our history, a tool for our sanity, a space for our individuality and stash is one of the tools of our trade, just as the musician has instruments, the painter canvas. It's a rite of passage into our actively creating selves. I thought I might share with you just a bit about my own stash. I started with no stash, just buying yarns needed for patterns I picked out. As those projects got completed I took the leftover yarn from them and tossed them all together into a crate and stash was born.

Shortly after I started crocheting again I ran into a few women who had quit, or had daughters who had quit and had yarn they handed down to me. I gratefully accepted this boon and added it in, found I needed a larger crate so I replaced the smaller one with three of those large Dollar Store, put-together-yourself, cardboard boxes, using the original smaller crate to hold my project yarns as I worked.

For the next couple years I happily worked from this acrylic stash, making scrap afghans, scarves and hats, and various small projects I whittled down half of the stash, then my mother, no longer able to knit or crochet, passed along all her yarns. Well now I was in a spot where I either had to come up with more tubs, or something as useful. I chose to transfer my yarns into Avon boxes because I have a friend who sells Avon and I could get the boxes free. They're wonderful; just wide enough to take the length of a skein of RH, oblong, not too big, not too small, with lids. They stack nicely and you can write the contents on the outside so you know what's there. I heartily recommend them and urge you all if you have that source available to you to utilize it. You won't be sorry that you did. Once again, I happily transferred materials and made a space in my study where I could stack the boxes. By now I'd accumulated about 12 boxes, all of it donated acrylics that I'd sorted and tried to box by colors.

I hadn't at that time acquired the dreaded YAS, but it wasn't to be much further behind. I fell in love with a few patterns from the Internet (where I get all my patterns, eh, make that 98.7% of my patterns, there again, the poor woman's way to acquire materials) that called for yarns I hadn't any familiarity with and thus began a yarn quest which took me to yarn lust. Making a special trip out to the yarn stores in town, I went through the couple in my area and noted the yarns, petted the yarns and cooed over them. At the time I could only look with envy; I didn't have disposable income for such luxuries.

Being the sort of person who hasn't money for luxuries, I would scour the discount shops in my weekly cycle, sometimes I would find acrylic worsted weights at discounted prices (which I bought gladly), but nothing else. In challenging my skills I would find patterns via the Internet that offered me the chance to learn a new technique or stitch, or that gave me the opportunity to learn a new type of crochet or try patterns that called for various yarns, but I could only go so far in these, I certainly couldn't substitute a worsted weight for a bulky chenille. I just bypassed the cute ponchos and thick sweaters and delicate lace tops with a wistful sigh.

My downfall came when the closeout stores finally started carrying the novelty yarns, then both novelty and specialty yarns as they began receiving them in closeout lots. Suddenly what was unattainable became a temptation and an opportunity to let my imagination out to play.

That simple stash stacked in the corner of my room has slowly evolved until today it incorporates a closet stacked full of fru fru yarns packed away in cardboard boxes, content marked many times over. A spare room (eventually destined to be the craft room) holds a couple tubs and some boxes filled with acrylics of various types, a few old suitcases with thread and a crate of plastic bags earmarked for yet another project as soon as I collect enough of the ones I want. Of course, meantime I'm collecting them all so I can practice with colors that I don't particularly want to use when making my own bag!
My current workspace gives easy access to the closet of yarns and has a 4 drawer filing cabinet of which only one drawer holds patterns printed from my Internet searching. An armoire, with several overnight cases full of items to aide my craft stashed beneath, is filled with supplies, tools, books, a few WIPS, and my cotton yarns. Beside the armoire is a plastic wheeled cart containing PIGS and beside my lamp and chair, right in front of my end table is a large tub and a small one with yarns that I'm pulling from for a project. Eventually those will end up back in with the other tubs in the aforementioned future craft room.

Now you may think this is an awful array of materials, but though I think that myself most of the time, I so often find myself looking for something in particular to make a pattern and cannot seem to find just the right item in there that it speaks to the relative deficiency of my hoard. Never enough yarn. Never enough time!

I have to say, at least I know where things are since this transition in my stash has been a recently achieved, albeit transitory, goal. I also managed to find a craft box, wicker, rectangular box on slender legs that I settled in front of the filing cabinet and a vintage vinyl-wrapped box on rollers, actually a sewing box but I'm using it to hold projects. It does double duty as a footstool. Once we set up the craft room, and the sewing machine, we will see if its use shifts since it has racks that hold spools of thread. I somehow doubt it because it's just the right size for me to elevate my feet while crocheting. So relaxing!