Really Close to Reaching Goals.

This is my stash yarn (bought from 2004 to 2009) at the beginning of 2013.

This is what I have left.

I had forgotten that I had planned to spin replacement yarn in 2013. All I remembered was that I had fallen below a comfortable amount of yarn on hand and at the rate I was going I would be completely out in 2015.

I had gone on a knitting vacation and bought some yarn there. I started working all that overtime and bought two balls of Malabrigo Twist as a reward. Then I helped a coworker set up a yarn estate sale.

At that sale I was fraught with the "I like you and I want to support you" emotions and guilt similar to visiting favorite yarn store but magnified because it was a friend in a sad situation. Added to that was the greed associated with of clearance yarn. Clearance discontinued yarn. What an emotionaly fraught day. I wanted it all. Instead I bought enough for three sweaters and a shawl. That was some epic self control on my part.

After the sale I was adding up the yardage I had bought for the year against how much I had knit and thought wouldn't it be nice to break even. I could buy even more yarn to make up the deficit! Sadly, that wasn't in my budget.

That's when I had the thought (again) of spinning up the difference and I pulled out my spinning wheel and started spinning.

in 2013 I knit 13,668 yards

All the yarn I bought in 2013, 10,070 yards

With the addition of all the yarn I was given. Better with the addition of 1,664 yards

And with all the yarn I spun, 1,900 yards. That's a total of 13,634 yards of yarn.

Even with the gift yarn and hand spun I'm still negative 34 yards for the year but I got really close. Also? That is a large pile of yarn. I knit that much, more than that much, and my yardage was down this year because of working 50 hour weeks and school. My brain just exploded a little bit.

2014 is more of the same. I don't want to own less yarn than I have now. I want to save my yarn money for my yarn vacation in 2015. Again the plan is to spin the replacement yarn and to buy even less than I did in 2013. I have enough fiber stash that I should be able to do that, as long as I  remember to actually do it.

New Year

I didn't get time off at Christmas so I didn't travel to see family but we have scheduled several gatherings in January to make up for it.

Christmas Eve was with friends playing boardgames, eating good food, giving and receiving yarny presents, and talking about yarn. Then I had a very nice quiet Christmas day to myself where I knocked out this sweet little number. 

The pattern is Sparrow and because I used a bulky yarn, Minnow Merino, I only cast on 80 stitches. this used my 13th and 14th old stash yarn for the year, completing the UILI challenge. 

This week I used the last of my PTO for the year. I told my coworkers that I was out for a "Five day New Year's Eve Party" and while I said it in jest it turned out to be completely true. Five days of playing board games, eating good food, talking about yarn (I've cultivated knitting friends along with turning friends into knitters), being given more yarny presents, and watching Doctor Who.

It almost ran six days long but the blizzard canceled tonight and we rescheduled for the weekend. 2014 is shaping up to be a spectacular year (I totally typed yarn there).