Disliked to Loved Yarns

Because I go through a lot of yarn I keep a pretty healthy stash of it. This was the state of my stash the last time I cleaned out and organized it back in 2024. Every time I work on whittling down my stash I donate what I don't think I'll use to the local thrift store. Because I've since acquired a bunch of new yarns via thrifting I'll have to do that again soon.

So what yarn do I pass along? My least favorite varieties, of course. This can be due to the type of yarn and/or the color. Life is too short to work with materials I dislike from the get go.

Baby and boucle yarn (this skein is both.) The colors are always insipid pastels, usually spun with some kind of vicose white strand, the texture of boucle is unpleasant to me, and I dislike how it looks after crocheting it. Also due to the light weight it takes forever for me to work it up into something.

Yarn with a lot of halo. Not only is it almost impossible to frog miscounted stitches due to the shagginess of the yarn, it looks old and sloppy when crocheted. This also goes for eyelash yarn.

This ribbon yarn, which I actually do think is pretty. I just can't figure out what to do with it.

Now that I've griped, let's look at my favorite yarns.

Handspun art yarn. It's very expensive, and I can't really afford it, but oh, it's so pretty.

Tweed or speckled yarn. Unlike eyelash yarn (or the kind with tons of halo) I like yarns with bits of other colors mixed in. The more unusual, the better. They make great-looking wearable projects. I have four skeins of this cream with black bits that I'm saving for the right scarf or shrug project.

Red Heart Super Saver yarns. I absolutely love this brand of acrylic yarn. It's soft without being too soft, it works up quickly, looks like a dream and there are never any knots in it. It's a real workhorse of a yarn.

What is my #1 favorite yarn of all time? Variegated yarn, of course. It works up in such interesting ways, and it never bores me while I'm working with it. I just thrifted a lot with this lovely skein in it (it's a Red Heart Super Saver Multicolor; I can tell those from a mile away) and I'm saving it for something special. I can never have enough variegated yarn.

I found another skein of the same variegated yarn with the label in that lot, and looks like I was right. Yay!

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Love Means This

Invested in a couple of hand-dyed bundles from one of my favorite fabric artists. This one said "Make me into something for Valentine's Day." So I went for a quilted and embellished tote. I kept thinking about what love means to me as I worked on it. Here's the finished tote. Although I was tempted to embellish with beads and pins, I got sick and only felt well enough to do a little stitching every night. As I worked I thought about how often love seems disappointing to us, especially when it fails to live up to our expectations. But now that I've experienced love in many forms, I can say that it's made me a better person than I might have been without it. Love is a precious thing, and should be appreciated in all its forms. I am very grateful for the love of my guy, my child and my friends who have stuck with me all these years. That's you two, in case you're wondering. :) Also finally found something to do with a ve...

Other Stashes

Along with clearing out the spare bedroom and tidying my office and our guest bedroom, I decided to reorganize some of my stashes. This is all the yarn I have on hand, sorted by color. It looks like a lot, but lately I've been using up a minimum of half a bin every month, so this is approximately a year's supply. All of my solid color cotton perle thread. I go through a lot of this every year, too. I need a container in which I can fit all of it together, but I haven't found the right one yet. I won't show you all of my fabric -- I'm still reorganizing this stash -- but I went through everything and donated two bins of fabric I won't need to the local quilter's guild.

Store Closing Haul

The mega Books-A-Million store over in Sanford is closing, and offered an extra 20% off on their current stock -- all sales final -- so I went over to do some shopping. Safely but sadly there was no one in the store but me the entire time I was there. The Holly Jackson novel is for Katherine, the Halloween board book is for Oliver, and the copy of Garden Spells is to keep on hand because I give that book to everyone. The rest of the books are for me. I love Anne Cleeves, and the Galbraith novel sounded interesting (the first couple weren't, but I'm willing to take another chance.) The Escape Room is by a new-to-me author, plus it was cheap. The GreenCraft mag is just a guilty pleasure. Hopefully the smaller BAM nearer to me won't close. I don't buy many books from brick-and-mortar stores these days, but that's really the last one within reasonable driving distance.

Valerean

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