Use It or Loose It

My favorite Podcast is hosting a year long knit-a-long with the theme Use It or Loose It (UILI). The premise is to pull 13 old projects worth of yarn out of your stash and knit it up or get rid of it. That can be selling it, gifting it, or throwing it in the trash. Whatever the yarn deserves. The idea is to evaluate these yarns that linger. Are they good yarns that have been pushed aside and for the new and sexy? Are they hanging out because in a moment of 50% off the wrong color was bought? Or maybe after years of exposure, Mohair is now too itchy to knit but the yarn is still there.

I'm all over this. I still have yarn from 2004. With my smaller numbers I will be knitting it all and this is the perfect time to dedicate myself to using the oldest. Part of the theme is taking a yarn and searching until the right pattern or project is found to best use it's potential. This part, rather than the stash busting, is what I'm interested in.

 So lets talk yarn.

This is the oldest yarn in my stash. It’s 10 balls of Galway that was to be Her and His sweaters. I bought in 2004 and as of 2006 there hasn’t been a him. I’ve held onto this because it’s GOOD yarn in my favorite color. The day I bought it was a good day and good memories but the reason I bought it…. well, not so much. For years I had planned to knit Rouge out of it but just never got around to it, to the point I deleted it from my queue months ago.

When UILI was announced I knew this would be my first yarn. I was going to swatch around trying different sweater patterns. Maybe A Very Plucky Cardigan or Alpine Meadow or Maijapaita - Maija Pullover but I was prepared to loose it at the end of the first 4 week check in. I suspected that nothing about this yarn would ever be right. Then Doubleknit Podcast talked about Rouge and it was back on my radar and I had thoughts of really and truly knitting the yarn into a sweater instead of trading it away.

Until I saw the yarn on my living room rug.

It’s perfect.

It's not Noro and I can't use it for the Ten Stitch pattern but surely I can find something inspiring in the blanket category. It took all morning searching patterns and Curve of Pursuit is the solution! I’m going to use scrap yarn for contrasting squares for as long as they hold out then knit the remainder of the blanket in this yarn as a solid color.

Now to convince myself that what I want is the finished end project of a blanket not the process of knitting the little color bits of Noro. Point is this has color bits too.