What Is A Girl to DO...

With SO much YARN?


I've settled on a project. (As if I could only do ONE thing at a time.)

Its going to be making and donating some afghans to the Victory Junction Gang.
Its a great place set up in the Piedmont of NC-- Founded & mostly funded by Kyle Petty, of NASCAR fame. http://www.victoryjunction.org/aa_camp/camp01_mission.html

Here is info if you want to share your skills at sewing, or quilting or knit or crochet. SEWING PROGRAM

Little Collections

Little Collections.
I say this in jest, because I've (once again) RE-discovered that I have a serious problem.
I'm a collector. I collect things. LOTS of *things*. (Admitting the problem is the first step to recovery, no scratch that, make it organization.)

I just smushed, wedged, inventoried, and reorganized, hauled, grunted and pushed, SIX heavy-duty 18 gallon plastic totes into my attic.

Now, what might be in those SIX heavy-duty 18 gallon plastic totes, you might ask?
Well, my collections.

All of my collections? You ask.

Nope. I proudly admit. (I am a collector, ya know.)

Those SIX heavy-duty 18 gallon plastic totes contained various collections of yarn that I have collected for various projects. (Please note: These six totes do not contain my entire yarn collection. Oh No. There are THREE of these same massively huge totes of yarn in my living room, where I can easily access & visit with the yarn.)

I made a list & dutifully labeled the contents of each tote. (No digging through the wrong totes for this girl!)

This list is sorted by projects that I have collected & hauled into the attic, not the corresponding tote.

1. WIP: Summer is too hot to work under it... My "Yummy Wool Afghan" & yarn required to finish it. Plus enough yarn in the same yummy wool to make one or two more afghan/throws. (When you find a wool this yummy & its less than 1/2 price-- ya just HAVE to add all you can find to your collection.)
   
2. The reclaimed wool sweater yarn & various wools that I've collected for "Mom's Purple Wool Afghan". Still in balls- too hot to be under the wool.
   
3. WIP: "MC's Super-Soft Blanket" and all of the yarns & possible novelty yarns a 5yo would want in a blanket. I've been working & restarting this project since before she was born. I plan to have this one satisfactory completed for her to take to college. --egads the colors, had to put it away for a while.
4. "Mom's Purplely-Blue Acrylic Blanket" Surprisingly enough, I've collected most (maybe all) of these yarns from clearance & sale bins. Still in the bag. I am trying to restrain my self--- I'll have a collection of WIPs if I'm not careful.
   
5. WIP: "The Masculine Acrylic Afghan" Maybe for V? Maybe for C? Basically neutrals & a subtle bit of color. Mostly left over from a previous collection, by adding a few new skeins- Wa-LA. A NEW collection! While technically a WIP, there are only 8inches completed, so, it is possible that I've not committed to this project.
   
6. "The Next Red Afghan" in balls, lots of wools & bits that will be or might be leftover from "My Purple/Orange/Red Afghan." It won't have the purples but I might sneak in some orange & pinks into it. It's just SO HARD to know in advance exactly what color/yarn/texture will work until you are in the middle of it! (Hence the huge collections for each afghan.)
7. "Baby Yellow" just 6 little balls at this point in time. I think this is my simplest collection right now.
8. "Baby Ombre" gifted to me from someone destashing & letting go of their collection. I've made one blanket out of it this far...
9. "Other Yarns" my hand-dyed cotton chenille, bolt of undyed cotton chenille, odd novelty yarns that I got great deals on, 6 balls of an orange heathers Shetland tweed wool-(Kinda scratchy but AMAZING color) a beautiful cone of brown/tan chenille, 2 lonely purple yarns that ended up being the totally WRONG color for the intended collection. And a few other random yarns.

Wow. I've just impressed myself. Thats a LOT of yarn.
Too much yarn to be all in the living room, during the summer, when it is over 90* every day.
I've allowed myself three totes to be left in the living room. Two of them have my precious Peaches & Creme Cotton, of which I have 2 projects going now & several waiting their turn to be used. The last box houses my collection of yarns being used in "My Purple/Orange/Red Afghan."

This style of creation just can't be planned in advance, as I stated above. It is very much a process of creating. And, since I just sort of design as I go-- Well, I have NO IDEA of how many yards of yarn it takes to make one of these things. However, I AM keeping track for Mom's Rugs that I am working on, but that is partly because She wants another one which needs to be a certain length, so I might need to buy more yarn.


Oh. and just a tiny peek at some of my other collections: BEADS, sterling silver wire, stuffed toy owls, Rubber stampers, polymer stampers, ink pads, random scrapbooking supplies (paper, eyelets, trims...) Cookbooks, birkenstocks, lighthouse items, pastry tools, fruit shaped pitchers, fabric yardage, I could keep going. I an such a candidate for TLC. I just need them to offer me a double header-- What Not To Wear combined with one of the organizing/clean-out shows. So if anyone has "connections" I will throw my self at your feet & beg.

I need help.
(Hey, is that step 2? Asking for help?)
Help? Help. HELP!!!!

P&C COTTON!!!!

So, on July 3 I took the day off & headed up the mountain. I woke Mom & MC up from their nap (being careful NOT to wake up my dad & son) & loaded them into the car for a 1.5 hour drive to Old Fort. We were on a mission & not even 100% sure the outlet was going to be open (holiday & all.) We headed to the outlet store for Peaches & Creme. THE source & supplier for our favorite cotton yarn.

I had googled directions & we were on an adventure. We made it through Marion, where I reminisced about not eating at McDonalds (I never eat at McDs) after a high school softball (or maybe tennis) away game. Then on down the road. We had determined that the road the outlet was on was going to be some sort of major through fair or main street in town. WRONG. We pass through was little bit of town there was & keep going. (Thank goodness for the mileage indicators in google map directions!) We see the road. It looks like we are heading down a driveway, NOT a major road. After giggling quite a bit because we were so wrong about the road & laughing because neither of us has a clue how far 442 ft will be, since the odometer measures in miles! Finally, we see a plant/warehouse type of building. It looks deserted.
Oh No.
We go in & ask about the outlet store. The lady told us to wait just a moment.
Then Flo walks into the lobby & takes us into the outlet!
Well, It's actually a little room that is just off of one of the big warehouse storage rooms (the one for 930 & 980 Worsted weight cones!!) In this room are shelves & shelves of sample cones, shelves with notebooks full of color samples (color cards) and shlves of pre-packs & kits. Also, 3 HUGE carts (like laundry carts the laundry services for hotels use) full of 2nds & mill ends.
I was in heaven!

Oh. And there was a big table down the middle with 4 packs of double worsted weight that were on sale (and big boxes full underneath as well!)

Being that I had JUST spent $100 on yarn at my LYS's annual pre-inventory sale, and filled FIVE 35 gallon totes with yarn, I was trying VERY hard to be good & not buy too much (is that possible?) yarn.

I bought (all 1lb cones unless otherwise indicated): 2 DWW in Raspberry Swirl, 1 market bag kit in DWW ecru, 1 morning glory table scape kit (1 cone ww morning glory & 3 co-ordinating balls of solids), ww sour green apple, ww tan, ww olive, ww fiesta, dww dark orange (4 balls), ww shades of blue, 2 cones of DWW in a fab bright aubergine (it was mis-dyed- should have been in ww!).

Now in my stash that mom bought (meaning I have to make things for her) DWW Shades of Rust, DWW Chocolate, DWW Seabreeze.

I think I have more that I can't think of at the minute, because I have over 20 cones of Peaches & Creme in my tote!