Boo's Attic Yarn

A friend and I paid a visit to the Made-It Market (Facebook link) yesterday. It was a fairly small affair in the Guildhall, with tables sporting cute cards, cool anime accessories, handmade chocolate, and a stall of those meaningful words ('love', 'friend', 'feelings') in a typewriter-y font glued onto stones. There was also some rather exciting yarn, from a local dyer who doesn't seem to have a website yet, but who can be contacted at boosattichomeATgmailDOTcom. I couldn't resist this one-off skein of laceweight - it's not the softest yarn I've ever stroked, but the colour is mesmerising: a dark, sensuous, velvety claret (the colourway is 'Cherry Valance'). I think was is the first time I've met a dyer in person, and it was most interesting to hear how she achieved this intense shade by dyeing over an oatmeal coloured yarn. 

Also, how adorable is this little key charm included with the skein?!

Handmade Fashion Photoshoot

Myself and some of my knits are to be featured in a spread on 'Handmade Fashion' in Varsity Newspaper. It did mean hauling the yasteroid around Cambridge, which has grown considerably since I first documented its existence, and is now about the size of Malta. I almost took along my current project - a jumper knit in the round on circular needles - but I was worried that wouldn't look like knitting to most people, so rustled up a pointless garter strip to use as a prop. I'm rather pleased with the photos, taken by the talent Edward Quekett - this one features my Irtfa'a shawl, and Forecast cardigan. I can't wait to see them in print!

A Confession...

I... I don't quite know how to say this. Maybe through the medium of macro...

No? OK, well... remember that stash pledge I made? Oh, do I have to spell it out?

I bought some yarn. Some really, really good yarn. This yarn, to be precise.

It is an absurdly luxurious laceweight from Old Maiden Aunt, consisting of baby alpaca, silk and cashmere, in the colourway Bitter Bug. Now, you know how I feel about Old Maiden Aunt yarns - I have made them into socks, shawls, and an ill-fated cardigan. Lilith (the dyer) just has an unparalleled sense of colour: this particular skein is a rhapsody in green, ranging from an inky, forest darkness to intoxicating dashes of absinthe. On top of that, there is a really cool concept behind this latest collection of hers:

All of these yarns are inspired by her favourite songs; in the case of my yarn, this Indigo Girls number. I long been a believer in the mixtape as a token of regard, and have given and received more than I could count. As Nick Hornby described in High Fidelity, making them is a craft in its own right, but I love the idea of honouring them through other crafts. As well as that yarn collection, check out Floresita's adorable mixtape card tutorial.

My little brother and I have a bit of a mixtape war going on, with the battle-ground as my mum's car. My inclusion of this Ethiopian jazz classic was taken by both mother and brother as conclusive proof that I had lost this war, which I suppose goes to show that gauging your audience is the key to mixtape success (I still love that song, though). I'd love to hear other people's mixtape stories - has anyone ever given you a really memorable one? Have you laboured over a playlist for someone you've set your cap at in the hope of getting them to return your affections?

Stash pledge

My stash spends most of its time as a large vacuum-packed yarn asteroid  - a yasteroid, if you will. This helps assuage my morbid fear of moth attack, and also serves as a handy space-saving 'solution'. It does, however, make it all too easy to ignore the size of the beast growing within. I had to rootle inside the yasteroid today, and have been shaken out of my denial by what I found. The six sweaters'-worth of yarn shown above do not represent the whole story; if anything, I am more irritated by the tangle of partial and single skeins. I think I should feel substantial better, though, once I had converted the above collection into garments. Therefore I do hereby solemnly pledge that I will buy NO MORE YARN until I have knitted up ALL SIX jumpers. Yikes!

ETA: I got a little sick of my violent pink colour-scheme - hope you like the new minimalist look.

Stash shlepping

After what seems like no time at all in Cambridge, I am upping sticks again for another trans-European odyssey. And sticks is not all I'm upping...

Moving around the triangle Edinburgh - Cambridge - Genoa has definitely contributed to my stash problem. Each time I arrive in a new place I stock up on stuff I worry I won't be able to get elsewhere. I know I'll be returning to all of the points of the triangle before too long but... what if the yarn I want is gone by then? And I spend the rest of my life regretting not having bought it?

I accrue more yarn in flagrant denial of the fact that I can't take it all with me wherever I roam, which leads to agonising decisions about what to knit next. Which patterns are sufficiently intricate to keep me interested whilst travelling, but not so complicated that they have the potential to go disastrously wrong if I don't give them my full attention? Then there is the problem of what to do with skeins to which I have to bid a sad, if temporary, farewell. How can I look after their welfare in my absence? Well...

... by turning them into a big, vacuum-packed yarn asteroid, that's how. I'd like to see a moth try to break in to this airless fortress.

Incidentally, just now, as I was packing, I pulled out a shoe bag from my wardrobe and found this in it.

A single mysterious ball of a rather nice colour of felted tweed. Where, when, why did I buy this? What on earth was I going to make that would take just one ball? No idea. 

Fallout Stashing

I responded to the international debate our prime minister is attempting to start on nuclear weapons by purchasing enough yarn to see me through the first few months of a nuclear winter.