Yo La Tejo

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. (Or, Catching up with the Memes, Installment 2 of 3.)

Hey, Laura! Bet you thought I forgot about this Flash Your Stash Meme that you tagged me with, like, a hundred years ago! I promised I would do it when I had a space in my house sufficiently clean enough for a photo op, and a hundred years later, the unlikely has finally happened. A clean-ish room!

Here I am, luxuriating in my fiber. Actually, not really...my roommate, Jennifer, had to persuade me to take this shot; she had a vision, akin to Alma Lopez's take on the Virgen de Guadalupe, except with yarn, instead of flowers.

Initially, I hemmed and hawed and really did not relish the idea of diving into all my wool and mohair and acrylic. Considering it's still in the 80s in Austin. But, it turned out to be a fun pic! Jennifer calls it my "Goddess of the Yarn" picture. :-)



The other reason I was loathe to roll around in my skeins is that it's not a stash I'm particularly proud of. Hence, the title of this post.

The Good: I do have some nice things that I am looking forward to knitting with. I have some Jaeger stretch wool that I think might work for Joelle Hoverson's Hourglass Sweater, and four skeins of Wendy's Unique, a bulky wool/acrylic, that was a birthday gift last year and that I'm thinking about turning into a wrap.

The Bad: I have some khaki green Lana Grossa Pom Pon that I like in theory, but am at a loss as to what successful knit item it might become. A shawl? Meh. A bag? Perhaps. I remain uninspired.

But some of the stuff, i.e. the Ugly, I feel decidedly ambivalent about.



See the pile of vintage Shetland Wool in the top left corner and the cream and gray acrylic in the bottom left? When I was more on the newbie side of knitting, I became intoxicated with the stories people had of finding treasure troves of yarn at the Goodwill or yard sales. Wow! I dreamed of finding some fabulous yarn in a bag marked down to a dollar, just because someone had gotten bored with their new hobby.

Never happened, my friends. The best I did was find a dusty bag of this old shetland wool (bought because it was an even 10 in a bag, and well, that's cool, getting so much yarn for about three bucks, right?), and then the acrylic for probably about the same amount of money. Well, neither yarn is particularly fabulous and in fact makes me wonder about where it's been and I can't bring myself to throw it out or give it away, but I still can only hold it at arm's length.

Anyway, I had a pretty good idea of my inventory, because I really don't have a big stash, but it was great to see the odds and ends I'd forgotten about, like an almost entire ball of pink Cotton Ease and enough Manos yarn for a hat for the hatalong. So, this actually turned out to be a good meme, despite the dread I had in dragging all this stuff out into the light of day.

And talk about dragging stuff into the light of day....I hereby present to you, Mervin. The yarn I lovingly, eagerly spun from the roving gifted to me at the Austin KnitOut.



Meep. Errrp. Momma!

I named the yarn because when I first wound it up, inexplicably I was reminded of stories about people who'd had tumors removed, that actually had grown hair, and teeth, and nails...like, a grotesque little almost-human. (I even think that Stephen King incorporates this idea into The Dark Half.)

So, this yarn reminds me of a misbegotten little baby tumor, that not even its mother could love, but that should have a name nontheless. Mervin. (Apologies to any Mervins I may have as readers...I'm sure you're much more attractive than this yarn.)

But, happily, Mervin has found a home! A knitter friend came over last night and said nice things about Mervin (just to be polite, I'm sure), so I pressed it into her hands and urged her to take him home. She just finished a sweet pair of Fuzzy Feet, her first, smashingly successful attempt at felting, so she had the brilliant idea of making Mervin into cuffs for some felted slippers. I'm sure that Mervin will be very happy decorating someone else's ankles.

posted by Olga @ 12:22 PM