A case for lace (weight)

Over the last decade or so, I have observed a dismaying trend in the yarniverse.  Take a moment to locate your nearest settee upon which to collapse and now get your pearls clutched.

Ready? Lace-weight¹ yarns have been disappearing from shelves, never to reappear.  A number of my favourite stand-bys are now discontinued or dropped from the catalogues of many vendors and the one kind of lace weight I avoid as much as possible, the mohair blend, is often the lone lace weight on offer at any given yarn shop.

Is this a true crisis in the grand scheme of things? Probably not really. Has this calamity registered in the pysche of of the average knitizen? Probably not one iota.

Perhaps you haven’t noticed the dearth of lace-weight yarn because I’m totally imagining it, or, just as likely, you belong to the majority of handknitters, who do not knit with lace weight on the regular except maybe to combine a strand of mohair with an equally dear strand of premium yarn or two.²  Then again, you cannot knit yarn that you cannot buy for love or lucre.

I heard some time ago that lace weight was falling out of favour and hence, a number of yarn companies had started phasing it out and many indie-dyers did not consider the effort of wrangling 600-or-more-yard skeins worthwhile.³  If you’re anything like me, that sent chills down your spine.  Of course, there are other options for people who like knitting with tiny needles and working endless rows.    For instance, one can unravel commercially produced sweaters and rehabilitate the resulting yarn or combine strands from cones of superfine yarns spun for industrial knitting machines.  One can learn to spin.  But all that is going too far, even for the likes of me.  Besides, why steal the joy of shopping for a new hank of yarn from myself?   It ranks as one of life’s great pleasures.⁴

Pretty, right?

A bowlful of scrumptious lace weight yarns--most of them from the atelier of the super-talented and wonderful Julie Asselin. She has single-handedly kept me from the pits of knitting despair these last few years.

For a list of the yarns pictured above, please see footnote 5.

I do enjoy knitting at other gauges, but after decades of knitting, I seem to have found a sweet spot with lace weight yarn.  It’s not as if I did not appreciate the multitude of delightful pictures of people knitting blankets with their forearms (I did) or that I have any need or desire to wear lace shawls (I don’t).  I belong to a bygone era (spiritually speaking, since it is one that predates my birth) that prefers yarns that knit up at a tension greater than 8 stitches per inch.

Most people only think of knitting lace with lace weight but it doesn’t have to be.  Others will only knit lace weight if they own a standard gauge knitting machine but you don’t have to since needles smaller than 1mm exist and 2mm needles (my preferred size) abound. (Which has me wondering: if it’s so easy to find 2mm needles, why is no one apparently knitting anything with them?)

In all fairness, I do not know what the non-internet knitters are knitting but they don’t seem to be buying enough lace weight to make it worthwhile for yarn purveyors to sell it to me.  Except for mohair.⁶

I recognize that I cannot single-handedly bring back lace-weight yarn but allow me to make a case for its continued existence anyway.  You may still conclude that I’ve lost all contact with reality but perhaps you’ll consider some of my points.

1. Entertainment value — If you compare the number of knitting hours to dollar ratio, you get far more out of 100g of lace weight yarn than say, 100g of worsted weight. I consider lace weight to be roughly 800 yards per 100g and worsted is roughly 200 yards per 100g, which makes lace weight about four times the fun. If you just want a final product fast, yes, go big. Or get a knitting machine, which, incidentally, is quite an awesome device and so much fun as well! (Once you conquer the learning curve, that is)
   
   
2. Sustainability — If you still care, this fits right in with the whole slow fashion ethos, emphasis on the slow
   
   
3. Wearability — Admit it, garments and accessories knit with lighter-weight yarn are more comfortable and more versatile to wear, especially if you like to layer. Ever notice how commercially knit garments and accessories mostly do not feature yarn thicker than a sport weight? I went through the super-bulky yarn phase and it was fun but I was younger and more determined to overcome the discomfort of not being able to fully lower my arms or bend my elbows
   
   
4. Hand pain — As in, less of it. I have some nerve damage in my hand and I seem to have chronic wrist pain now that I’m old. Knitting with laceweight has been a mercy. Yes, yes, I was advised by multiple professionals to lay off the knitting and I mostly have but when I absolutely must pick up needles to soothe a (my) troubled soul, a lightweight project knit with very little strain on my hands is just the thing.^[7]
   
   
5. Stash volume — You could easily hit SABLE and your entire stash still fits in a single tote bin. That bowl of yarn pictured above will easily keep me knitting for years
   
   
6. Portability — A lace weight project is very easy to pack and carry. It’s tiny and hardly weighs a thing
   
   
7. $$ — The other, and perhaps more important value-add is the amount of money you would need to spend on a lace-weight project. This is of course dependent on multiple factors but 100-200g of laceweight will be all you’ll need for most anything you’ll knit at this weight. Compare this to a comparably-sized garment made with worsted weight yarn
   
   

My last point is possibly the least relevant to you unless you are absolutely desperate to knit the patterns I have not revealed anywhere,⁸ nearly all of which feature lace weight yarn--half of which have been discontinued and the other half may be facing extinction if the tide does not change. I’d rather not be stuck with a bundle of patterns that are designed for phantom yarn. But it seems I may be late to the party once again.

Nevertheless, I still have plans to publish my patterns over the coming months (or if past performance is any indication, years) and maybe my tiny plea for the lace weight category will be joined by other tiny pleas to create a sound heard by yarn shops and yarn producers that can’t be ignored.  My patterns are still likely to be, but that’s a different issue altogether.

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Footnotes

¹ When do you hyphenate "lace weight"?  Copilot gave me some contradictory instructions but I am attempting to follow them as best I can because damned if I know any better.  Copilot also adamantly insisted that "laceweight" is not a thing.  I beg to differ but, again, who am I to say?

² Statistically, you belong to the majority, however, if you’re here reading this, I think that puts you squarely into micro minority territory so maybe you hear me and your alarm bells are clanging too...but still not likely

³ I think full-on lace shawls enjoyed their little resurgence with knitters back in the aughts but have fallen out of favour (except among the die-hards)—probably for another hundred years^3a

^3a I would worry about the pushback this tongue-in-cheek prediction would receive from the contingent of devoted lace knitters out there but then I'd have to have some faith that this blog hasn't lost all of its two readers in the last few years of complete radio silence

⁴ If one is a knitter or married to one

⁵ Nurtured Fine, by Julie Asselin. Colourway: Anémone
Merletto, by Julie Asselin. Colourway: Noir d’Encre & Licorice
Anatolia, by Julie Asselin. Colourway: Après La Pluie
Silky Alpaca Lace, by Classic Elite Yarns. Colourway: 2413 Night
Silkpaca, by Malabrigo. Colourway: Paris Night
Lacegarn Birdies, by Rohrspatz & Wollmeise. Colourway: Casablanca
I fully endorse the purchasing of lace weight yarn, whether indie or not.  Have at it!

⁶ By golly, the mohair. It photographs beautifully but its virtues end there. However, that isn’t going to stop me from exploring its uses for a pattern

⁷ Also, an egg timer to remind me to not knit for too long or else I may never knit again

⁸ Because that would require me to finish editing and we all know that is a task that is never complete(d)

Knitting Tools-Day: The Yarn Unwinder (or why I will never knit from a center-pull ball again)

Some three four months have elapsed since I first stated that I was starting a series of posts about knitting tools and today, at long last, I begin the first in what I hope will become a series of knitting tools posts. In that first post, I mentioned my love of tools in general and my intent to talk about some of the knitting tools I like but don’t often encounter mention of elsewhere (and when I say “elsewhere”, I promise you I have not scoured the internet to confirm).

Today’s tool topic is, erm, these things:

I have seen various names (some of them trademarked) applied to them but no real consensus on a single term.*  This is possibly because they aren’t as widely in use as I would have thought (at least given how totally awesome I find them.  Although, since I first wrote about these some five years ago, there are many more vendors selling their own versions, so possibly these aren’t as rare as I like to think.)  People seem to like the names “yarn Lazy Susan” or “yarn spinner”.  I guess I still call it a “yarn unwinder” even though it doesn’t quite roll off the tongue, because it is at least a bit more accurate than "yarn spinner", which to my mind, is a person who turns fiber into yarn.  I’ll just quote myself and say that whatever you call it, I call it indispensable.**

You might be a little sceptical about how this device is any better than just pulling yarn from the center of a ball or using a yarn bowl--the former being simplicity itself and the latter being prettier.  To address this question, I’m going to talk a bit about yarn management and the issue of added twist before I get to the actual yarn unwinders.

YARN MANAGEMENT

By “yarn management”, I mainly mean how you get your yarn off the ball while you are knitting and, when applicable, how you are taming that ball of yarn.  Are you pulling from the center or are you pulling from the outside end? A center-pull ball is kind of self-managed--the beauty of it is that it calmly stays in one spot (for the most part) while you disembowel it.  If you are pulling your yarn from the outside end, the ball requires taming or at least a long leash. If it isn’t rolling along the floor or being strong-armed to flip over the necessary number of times to allow you to knit a few more stitches, you are probably using a yarn bowl or some other containment device.

Part of the trouble with these aforementioned methods is that unwanted twist is being added to the yarn in the process.

(Although, to be more precise, the center-pull ball is definitely twisting the yarn as it is pulled out, whereas the second method of pulling yarn off the outside is a little more unpredictable because it’s usually just taking the path of least resistance which might not always be causing a twist.  I find the slipperier the yarn, the more likely it is to just slip off the end instead of unrolling). If you are pulling yarn off the top of a cone, it is like pulling yarn from the center in that it is adding twist (or subtracting, depending).

If you require visual assistance, I made this entirely amateur video to try to demonstrate what's happening to the yarn.

THE TROUBLE WITH TWIST

My very first forays into knitting, I would just start from the outside end and pull the yarn off the ball, letting it roll and flip in any old direction.  Then I was introduced to the magic of the center-pull ball and I thought it was pure genius. I sallied forth happily knitting from center-pull balls for years until one day, I was working on a blanket and the yarn was kinking up so badly that it wouldn’t slide over my tensioning finger.  I was forced to untwist the yarn by dangling my project from the working yarn and letting it spin around until it regained equilibrium. By the third ball (of some twenty or so balls), I realised that this was not going to be a practical solution for the rest of the project. I had a lot of time to think about what was happening to my yarn during all those many un-twisting sessions and I came across this post by (the much more methodical)  Tech Knitter. Suspicions confirmed. In order to solve my problem, I devised this little contraption out of K’nex:

(Photos unearthed from the archives.)

I finished the blanket without further incident and I’m glad I did because it has gotten a lot of use in the last several years.  (In fact, I am currently huddling under it waiting for the weather to realize it's now spring.)  My next project was a long cardigan knit from cones and there was no way I was going to risk knitting 1600 yards into an unwearable sweater by pulling the yarn off the top of the cone. (Edit: I discuss the issue of biasing a little more in the video—which I probably shouldn’t have assumed all readers would have watched. In short, a yarn with unbalanced twist can result in a biasing fabric.) Past experience had taught me that a biasing item cannot be fixed with blocking and it won’t end up getting worn more than once. I had to come up with another device (which was basically a cardboard shoe box with a long Sz.13 knitting needle mounted inside) to accommodate the height and weight of the cones because K’Nex is pretty weak when you come down to it.  After those two projects, I decided I would never go back to the center-pull ball.

EVEN MORE REASONS TO USE A YARN UNWINDER

Now, I readily admit that countless people have knit an untold number of items successfully with center-pull balls so what I’m fussing about is those other occasions when your yarn keeps kinking up while you knit, or, worst of all, the knitted fabric biases due to the excess twist.  This alone is reason enough for me to always use an unwinder, but wait, there’s more!

Consider this, when you use a yarn unwinder there is:

1. No fishing around the center of a ball in search of the end

2. No yarn barf

3. No collapsing of nearly finished yarn balls. You know what I’m talking about, those shells of their former selves. The yarn looks so sad like that and sometimes they get into a tangle, having lost their structural support

4. No more satellite center-pull balls. The other bane of the center-pull ball: having to frog something part way through the ball. You make a satellite center-pull ball which you cannot always stuff back into the original ball. The yarn unwinder in reverse suddenly becomes a yarn winder--you simply spin your frogged yarn back onto the ball

(I was already sold at “no yarn barf” but this last one is my favourite.)

(Ah, center-pull balls.  Those were the days.)

WHY YOU MIGHT NOT LIKE AN UNWINDER

I may sound like I’m trying to convince you that you need and will be forever grateful to have a yarn unwinder in your life, so for the sake of a balanced perspective, I should probably mention a few of the potential cons of the yarn unwinder,

1. Portability. These are not the most conveniently portable of devices, but it's not as if you're putting a ceramic yarn bowl in your purse either

2. On the topic of portability, even if you are willing to pack it into your handbag or tote, you will find it rather difficult to knit straight out of the bag. You’ll need to take it out and set it on a surface. This will attract looks and if you are in stealth-mode knitting at the office, this is not your friend

3. Aesthetics. They mostly don’t look as pretty as yarn bowls. Some of the hand-crafted versions are quite nice, but really, especially out of context, they are a bit odd looking

4. Cats. I don’t currently own a cat, but plenty of knitters do. You know and I know that chances are this is going to get batted off the table as soon as you leave the room

5. Sound. They aren't completely silent and the version with the lazy Susan mechanism could drive a person with sensitive ears batty with those ball bearings racing around a metal track. I myself barely notice it, but that might be due to a misspent youth blasting music through my headphones

CHOOSING AND USING A YARN UNWINDER

1. There are two basic types of yarn unwinder.  The first consists of a top portion that rests on a supporting base and rotates freely on the base's spindle.  I call these "free-spinning" unwinders.  The second is built with a "lazy Susan" mechanism that allows the top portion to spin around, hence, the "yarn lazy Susan".  The model I own has a spindle which can be unscrewed from the base for flat-packing.  Whichever type you choose, it should spin very smoothly and not require much force to rotate

2. Whichever type you choose, the base needs to be very stable.  In other words, it needs to be heavy enough and/or wide enough that it can resist the force of the yarn being pulled off the ball.  You don’t want it tipping over or sliding. Even the solid wood versions can start making their way towards the edge of a table so in this case, adding rubber feet helps if there aren’t some already

3. If you want a two-piece unwinder that spins freely on a base, it is really important that the top piece turns smoothly and freely on the base spindle.  Also, this base spindle needs to be long enough and strong enough to hold this top securely so that it doesn't get pulled off while you’re working

4. The yarn unwinder should be set on a table or another stable surface and just as importantly, it needs to be at a height level to your hands or a little higher.  If you set it lower than your work, you’ll find that the yarn wants to wrap around the post and will not feed smoothly. This shouldn’t be a problem if you get a version with a yarn guide. I have seen versions that have yarn guides built in or as separate attachments.  Edited to add: I also recommend placing the unwinder to your right if you carry your working yarn in your right hand and to your left if you carry your yarn in your left hand--it's a small difference, but worthwhile if you find that the yarn isn't feeding smoothly.

5. Do not set it on the floor.  Now the yarn is coming off the top of the ball or cone and the yarn unwinder is no longer doing what it’s meant to do.  In other words, you are adding twist to your yarn and to make it worse, as the ball gets lighter, it will just keep getting pulled off the top of the post because it can’t resist the upward pull

6. If you are working from a larger or oblong skein, the post needs to be longer than the skein and I think this is when the yarn guide becomes very useful. I don’t have much experience working with skeins like this because I tend to wind everything into cakes, but if you regularly work with long skeins or gargantuan balls of yarn, you’ll need to make sure you get something appropriately sized. The ones I have are meant for the typical 50g or 100g put-ups you find for hand knitting yarns so you should look for versions that have wide bases that will prevent it from tipping over while you work or have a means of clamping to a surface

7. When working with coned yarns, stuffing some soft foam inside the cone will help the yarn unwinder do its job more efficiently.  It prevents the cone from wobbling about. If you’re just setting the cone on something like a paper towel stand, don't stuff the cone because you need the lack of friction for the cone to turn since there's no other mechanism helping the cone to spin

8. I recommend purchasing in person or from a vendor with a good return policy. There are a lot of little variations from one manufacturer to the next and you might not find the right one for you if you choose on looks alone. You literally need to be able to “give it a whirl” first!

9. Lastly, this point is about hand-wound balls of yarn. Hand winding a ball of yarn will actually impart a twist to the yarn. So, if you are concerned with added twist, this is important to consider because the yarn unwinder won’t untwist yarn.***

ON A TIGHT BUDGET?

Regarding cost, if this is money you are unwilling to spend but you want to try some version of a yarn unwinder, you have options.  I made low-tech and low-cost versions before I discovered I could pay someone to make one out of nicer materials for an amount that I was willing to part with.

If you want one for under $15 (USD), the Yarn Valet™ yarn dispenser is available through Knit Picks and Michael’s, and probably others as well.  (I haven’t personally tried it out, so I can’t vouch for how well it works but there is a video review here.) If DIY is more your style, you can try hacking various common household items that you might already have or can find at a yard sale or thrift store.  On Ravelry, I have seen the occasional mention of empty CD spindle cases, paper towel holders, standing toilet paper holders, and cardboard boxes/plastic bins with a knitting needle or dowel stuck through it. Tech Knitter has a DIY tutorial for a fairly hefty but very functional-looking version here.

I’ve tested out a few of these DIY options and it can work pretty well but I would say that generally speaking, it helps if you use something to decrease the friction so the yarn can rotate more readily.  For instance, the CD case works better if you can put a large nut (or something like) under an actual compact disc (which I’m going to guess you don’t need anymore in this modern era) and then rest your yarn ball/cake on the disc.  If using a paper towel stand or something that does not have the ability to rotate on an axis, I would probably consider winding the yarn around a cardboard tube and then putting it into place. With all these things, you will probably need to weight or clamp the base or else the whole contraption is coming straight at you.  Let my dented floor be a lesson to all.

(As for using K’nex, I imagine that’s probably not hanging around most homes or at your average yard sale because Lego it is not, so I won’t recommend it even though it worked quite well for 50g balls of yarn and with a clamp to keep it affixed to a table.)

If you want to see some of the options for yarn unwinders available, I made this Pinterest board with direct links.  It's a short list because I intentionally did not include every last vendor I have seen online, but you can take a look at the first footnote below to find a list of search terms to help you look for other products or DIY tutorials.

I may or may not have convinced you that this tool is a necessary one, but personally, I will not be going back to my old ways of the center-pull ball.  Yarn unwinders are tidy, efficient, and highly functional, when used properly.  It's a tool I wouldn't readily give up and I don't regret a single penny I spent on them, which is more than I can say about my yarn stash.

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Footnotes:

*I am a big fan of standardized nomenclature, as well as useful tools, but I don't run the world.  Here's a list of the names I've come across.  I wouldn't be at all surprised if there are more.  I notice that if you only search one of these names, you don't see all the options available so if you really want to get an idea of what's out there, you'll have to search multiple terms.

• Yarn Lazy Susan

• Yarn butler

• Yarn caddy

• Yarn spinner

• Yarn top

• Yarn holder

• Yarn unwinder

• Yarn dispenser

• Yarn tree

**When I call a yarn unwinder indispensable, I speak of personal preference, not universal truth.  Please don't blame me if it doesn't change your life.

***I still won't be going back to center-pull balls, but, did you know that if you pull the inside end from a hand-wound ball from the right end, it will actually cancel the twist you added when you wound it?  By the "right end" I mean this: if you wound the yarn clockwise around your thumb or a nostepinne (assuming you are looking down at the tip or "north end"), the end that you pull from the center should exit out the south end.  If you were to pull the end northwards, you are actually doubling the amount of added twist which is when things could get dicey.****

****It’s 2022 now and I have had time to ponder this topic some more and I think some follow-up / revision to this article is in order. When I do get back to making content for this website, I hope to do just that. If you have questions or comments about yarn management, added twist, or yarn unwinders in general, feel free to send them my way and I’ll try to incorporate them into the update (when it happens, which is hopefully this year, but no promises). You can drop me a line through this site’s contact form.

(Not the Heisenberg) uncertainty principle

It took me a long while, but I eventually learned to never say never.  Things can change.  Circumstances, ideas, and above all, people, can change.  Or at the very least, if a person isn't opening her narrow mind to the infinity of possibilities, she can rephrase her sentiments.  For example, a knitter who would once emphatically proclaim: "I would never knit socks" might instead say something like, "I'm not really a sock knitter", thereby introducing the possibility, if not the probability that sock knitting might happen in her life.  Likewise, another knitter might have spent the last decade firmly entrenched in the belief that project monogamy was essential to that project's completion and also that any other path led straight into the abyss of eternal startitis.  Yet the turn of the new year has that knitter toying with the idea of starting all the projects all at once just to test the validity of that theory, because, hey, why not? and let's be honest, not a lot of knitting got done in all those years.

But that has nothing to do with me, I'm sure.

Let's talk about my recent knitting and the projects I have going.  In the fall, I cast off my first ever bona fide socks.  That's sort of a lie.  I have knit a pair of "cabin socks" as a gift and a lifetime ago, I knit a pair of hiking socks (that could stand on their own, which was helpful because no one was prepared to assist them).  What I have never knit until now is socks out of fingering-weight yarn, i.e., socks that were theoretically wearable inside a pair of shoes.  And now I have.

After that, another pair of socks happened because the first pair was supposed to have been for me but didn't end up fitting.  I learned that -10% ease is way too loose for my liking and in the interest of self-preservation, I just knit a longer foot and presented them to my partner, who also likes a snug sock.  Why waste a perfectly good sock toe and a few inches of stockinette by frogging, I asked myself.

It's a good thing I got over the frogging aversion because otherwise, this second pair would also not have fit me or any adult I know.  I'm glad I made the necessary changes because I'm pretty pleased with these socks!  It's only been in the last year that I really came to appreciate wool on my feet after randomly buying a pair of wool socks to make it to the free shipping threshold for an online order.  Am I about to become a sock-knitting addict?  Jury's out (buying more self-striping sock yarn).*

It didn't take me long to cast on another pair of socks, despite having already started multiple projects since 2018 got going.  Lest you begin to wonder, I am not really a sock knitter.  Really.

When I bought this skein of fingering weight BFL last year in this super-charming "Dalmatian" colourway by Ancient Arts (another fantastic Canadian dyer) it was to make a hat, but I tried casting on for a hat, ripped it out, started again twice more and finally concluded that this yarn just wanted to be socks.  Who was I to argue?

All this knitting has unfortunately caught up with me so to give my wrist flexors time to recover I'm taking a break from knitting and starting on my #2018makenine sewing projects.  (Aside from a couple home decor items, I haven't sewn in the last few years so this is really exciting for me.  Although, I'm not sure if the more exciting part is the fact that I now have a room in which I can actually do some sewing and not have to pack everything away at the end of the day so that we have somewhere to eat and can sit down without fear of getting stuck by errant pins.)  I happened across the Make Nine challenge for the first time just last month and I really loved the idea partly because it was like a year-long Summer of Basics** challenge and partly because following the #2018makenine tag on IG has provided a nice dose of sewing inspiration.  I've been out of the sewing game for so long that I'm pretty unfamiliar with what's been happening in terms of the range of independent pattern publishers and fabric sources available online.  Seeing what people are choosing for their Make Nine gives me a nice little snapshot of what's going on and I really enjoy seeing people tackling their projects with such enthusiasm and confidence.  I tend to hesitate for way too long before starting (or not starting at all) because I'm afraid of screwing something up or ending up with something that doesn't blow my mind away.  But disappointments will happen and it's just a part of making.  If I have any New Year's resolutions (besides the requisite commitment to stashdown and to start exercising regularly), it's to ignore the what-if-I'm-not-good-enough-fears that stop me from attempting things and just START already.

But, I'm a fan of baby steps.  My #2018makenine is pretty tame.  I have all the materials and patterns for nine projects that I'm totally stoked about making so I don't have to spend any time (or money) on acquiring stuff.  (Truly, I have all the materials and patterns for much more than this, but I think nine projects in a 12-month is plenty ambitious for me).  The projects I've chosen are not super-complicated, they are all things I really want in my wardrobe, and a few of them are already cast on or cut out.  (WIPs are fair game too, right?)  This means I've got way more projects in active rotation*** than I've ever had before.

It never occurred to me before this year that having several projects going at once might actually be more efficient if you are someone who is easily distracted when something about a task becomes frustrating or boring.  You just switch gears and pick up something else that's also on the go.  Something's getting done and it doesn't involve Train of Thought or mindless surfing.  (I used to think that if I didn't start working on an entirely different project, I still had every intention of tackling the project at hand and toiling through the difficult stages--so I would do something noncommittal, like play a game on my phone or surf, but it would be weeks before I came back to it because life only offers you so many hours to spend on a hobby.)  Which is why I'm experimenting with starting multiple projects without finishing something first.  I can't deny that this feels a bit like skipping dinner and raiding the dessert table.  Which is to say, I'm really enjoying this strategy at the moment but I fear there may be consequences.

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Footnotes:

*My first two pairs of socks were knit with Striped Turtle Toes by Turtlepurl Yarns, an independent Canadian dyer based in New Brunswick.  The first colourway is "Beekeeper" which I purchased at The Knit Cafe and the second is "Comic Strip" which I found at Eweknit (both are fantastic shops in Toronto, but if you are not in Toronto, Turtlepurl's Etsy shop is well stocked).  I think I may have given this whole sock knitting thing a whirl because I enjoyed these self-striping colourways so much and I needed an excuse to buy them.  Not exactly in keeping with my stashdown goals, I know, but my guilt is somewhat assuaged by the fact that I knit two pairs of pretty fun socks as a result.

**My Summer of Basics wasn't exactly a success or a failure but it did get me to narrow down the infinite list of possible projects and I actually started (and completed!) a couple of projects.  A real triumph for a perpetual procrastinator.

***This is not to suggest that I never had a huge pile of WIPs languishing in a corner.  However, if I ever put aside a project to start something new, I had pretty much sentenced it to permanent exile.  If it didn't get frogged or chucked, it's still sitting in a box somewhere.  (Sorry, Mom.  I really do mean to come by and deal with those.)