Why I Am Sad.

That's minus a week's worth of stuff I've already traded off, BTW. There's still some stash that needs to be sorted, but it's mostly... yeah.
In general, there's also a big quality difference between the stuff in tub A and the stuff in tub B, too. :P

I'm thinking I might as well drop out of my "stash knit down" group. That tub on the left there, that's not a stash. That's leftovers. I can't go shopping in there! :P

Look, you didn't even get your PUN right.

Ravelry sells ad space to knitting stuff. Tasteful, out of the way, they've got to finance the largest fiber arts site on the planet, and some of the stuff advertised is really awesome, so that's cool.

One ad I was today was for Knitch Magazine, a new online magazine for knitting fashion.
Uh huh. I'm not going to say anything bad about the content except that I really sincerely doubt that monk's robes are going to be the hottest thing in evening wear this year. Or day wear, for that matter.

However, the word I think they're trying to pun there is "niche". Notice the 'e' on the end. Despite what teh internets seems to think, "nitch" is not even a word. And "knitch" is a terribly arcane word meaning a bundle of plant stalks.

Suffice to say, I am less than impressed.

The Source of All The Trouble

Some very nice people wanted to see the kitty for whom I am dumping most of my wool fiber, so here's my pretty girl:


Here she is with another cat, Malcolm. No good can come of this.


See, I told ya.


This photo here succintly demonstrates the problem:

(That's pre-haircut and pre-house-recovery, BTW.)

She knows she's worth it.

Well, that was depressing.

As I wrote about the other day, it turns out that my cat Mara is allergic to wool among other things. The vet is sending me a complete list of what she was tested for and what substances were positive. (So there's always the hope that maybe it was lanolin or sheep dander and not actually wool. The vet tech on the phone was having trouble reading off some technical term and then went "oh, wool!", so maybe she made a mistake. I'm not going to plan on it, though.)

Although she has other allergens, wool is the easiest of the ones I know about for me to manage, so for now I'm concentrating on it and the dust mites. Of course, I knit and spin, so this is not a trivial activity.

And that what brings me to what was depressing: preparation for major destash. I've decided that if it's got wool and I don't love it, I'm going to try to destash it.

• I have a lot of wool and wool blend yarn. I divided up the portion of stash I already had organized so wool was in one storage tub and wool-free in another. The wool tub was about 1/4 full. The wool-free had four items in it. :P
• If you're not a retailer, you can't get a good price for yarn. Especially the single balls I've got. If I get back half of what I paid on any given item, I'll probably be lucky.

This is about the best argument against keeping a stash that I've ever received. :P

In the next few days, I'm going to try to put together a page of some of the wool-containing yarns I need to destash, and open a "want to trade" post on the nicer of my regular knitting boards. I'll come out ahead if I can trade for wool-free yarn, even if it isn't a one-for-one trade, but that's probably not going to get a whole lot of takers. What's left there will go up for sale on Ravelry, where I won't get much for it. I don't know a better place to go, though.

Oh no! She's allergic to WHAT?!

Last month I had a pretty impressive vet bill for my cat Mara because she needed an allergy test. She just keeps getting infections and irritations in her ears and other parts, and it will help her a lot if we find out what it is and work to desensitize her to it.

Well, the results came back today, with several positives. Ragweed and a few other weeds that don't surprise me. The dust mites I was dreading, but that can be handled. But then came the last thing on the list: sheep's wool.

SHEEP'S WOOL?! O_O

I knit and spin. There is sheep's wool EVERYWHERE. You walk in the living room, there's sheep's wool cat toys. (Well, not any more, but there was one sitting right in front of me as I talked to the vet.) Walk into my bedroom, there's a wool hat and pair of slippers on my dresser. We won't even talk about the craft room, with the wool spinning fiber and the wool yarn. Go downstairs, there's a flippin' fleece in the laundry room. My mittens are wool. My winter hat is wool. The scarf I just finished is wool! The sweater I'm knitting on is wool. The shawl I'm making... Well, that one's alpaca, so that's OK. But still!

I'm really not sure how I'm going to manage this one. I'll do my best to keep wool away from her, but there's so bloody much of it! 90% of my stash just became verbotten. And technically the other 10% is contaminated. Thankfully it's not a matter of life and death. Given that, though, and given how much of it there is,I think I'm going to have to go for a "minimal harm" model. Keep her out of the craft room, put wool items in that room as I find them, put her in another room if I want to work with wool outside of the craft room, always wash my hands after doing so (or wearing my mittens) before touching her,and trying to minimize or eliminate wool from future incoming stash. Any other ideas?

I guess, as much as the cover offends me, that a copy of No Sheep For You is in my future. I know my LYS carries it.

So, how about some vibes for the desensitizing medicine to work and work fast? (And hope she doesn't bite my hand off at getting pilled every single day.)

Lookie what I finished!

My tiger eye scarf!


They look more like owls than tigers to me, but I still really like this pattern. I've been working on this guy since late May. Not exclusively, of course, but it has been my main project for the last month or more.

Just in time for the cold weather to move in (again).