Yarn Diet Fail or 10 to 4

Remember that ColourMart design contest I entered a thousand million stitches (ok, 4 shawls) into?

I won!

What did I win?

I won the best prize of all....I won the Colourmart Yarn Vouchers!  (Not that I would have said No to stitch markers, buttons, labels, chocolates, or hand dyed ColourMart Yarn, which were among the other prizes.)  And, I entered thinking that just knitting a whole  bunch of yardage and doing something about the 230 plus miles of yarn I have in my stash would be a great prize, winning anything at all  was  a  big plus!

But as far as stash downing goes, it was pretty much a massive fail!  I knit 3,842 yards of Colourmart yarn during the contest.  With my winnings I was able to get 14,226 yards of extra fine merino and a cashmere/extra fine merino blend.  For a net gain of 10,384 yards.

Total Yarn Diet Fail!

But, man oh man, the fun I am going to have with those 14,000 yards!

At this rate I will have to live forever to knit down my stash!  Not to mention kick my kids out of the house to generate more yarn storage space.

I was asked today, in a totally unrelated conversation, to go over my new favorite provisional cast on for shawls.

This tutorial from Bad Cat Designs is pretty close to what I do, I just skip the double pointed needle and start knitting my garter tab from those half hitches, using the my circular needles.  I  knit an odd number of rows (twice how many rows as you want stitches for the start of the shawl, plus one row.) pick up and purl along the long edge and then knit the other side of those initial half hitches. The first row is a little fiddly, but after that it is clear sailing, as they say.  With the added bonus of no horribly obvious "hump",  no waste yarn, no futsing to unravel a crochet chain or extra knitted rows to remove.

Clear as mud?

If not leave me a comment, the kids are either on, or about to be on, summer break from school, maybe I can try making a video!

One other question that came up during the course of the day...No you do not need a Ravelry account to buy my patterns!  But, it's free, and a wonderful timesink  resource, so if you are not on Ravelry, try it!

In other knitting news :

Test knits are progressing. I technically have three in process and one came to visit today!  I am so jealous of the beautiful gradient set that is being used. (One of the best reasons to help a friend with knitting, when you need a tester or two they are there for you!) The knitter for that test knit also walked me through setting up an Instagram account, now all I have to do is figure out how to use it!  If it was tumblr my kids could help, but they don't instagram either, guess my knitting friends will have to point me to some tutorials!

I am on row 123 of the reknit of Colourmart Design Entry Number 4, sounds good in a 263 row shawl until you do the math and realize that is only 15% of the knitting! This time around I have a massive chart that shows every blessed stitch on each side of the spine!  Once the knitting is done on my end, it will be time to put it all together and put out another test knitting call!

I just looked at the calendar and tomorrow is the last Friday of the month.  Eeek, where did May go?  It is time for the newsletter already and I haven't done a darn thing towards writing it!  How do you feel about cutting me some slack and waiting until Monday for it?