Saturday, January 10, 2015

Winter Stash Updates and Stashdown 2015

Friends of mine in KW, home of the fabulous Uptown Knit Mob, have organized a stashdown competition for 2015.  I'm all in!
I'm fully committed to ONLY knitting and spinning from my stash in 2015.
That meant I had to sneak a few more items into the stash before the end of the year ;)

How could I resist a Cyber Monday sale at Georgian Bay Fibre company?  I'd not yet heard of this Canadian yarn and fibre dyer, but happily I was tipped off by a random Twitter retweet. Sweet joys of social networking.  With free shipping on an order over $50 and yarn/fibre at 50% off, how could I lose/not shop?  Just look at these fabulous braids of BFL (the purple-grey is a blend with silk):



Soon after, a surprise package from the same Mob arrived at my door. I'm pretty sure it's an attempt to sabbotage my stashdown efforts with more stash goodness.


There was also jam. I tried some immediately. The silver purse is to coordinate with my silver dress - should I ever have the opportunity to wear it again. It will also look fabulous with any of my little black dresses.

As if this yarn and fibre wasn't enough to pad the stash, my sister gave me this!

This spring I will open it up to see the fleeces packed solid inside. We have no idea what to expect, but they will need to be cleaned. Hopefully at least some of it will be spinning quality.  These fleeces are from the sheep who used to live on the farm that my sister just bought.  The story I was told is that when my sister and BIL mentioned to the owner that I was hoping one day they would get fibre animals, she left this in the barn for me.  It's a test - if I can handle processing this fibre my sister and BIL will consider fibre animals.  The infrastructure is already there.
I think it's really just my sister's bribery attempt to get me to visit the farm often.  It's not close to the city.
Before the spring I'll need to shop for huge bins to wash the fibre, some sort of scour product, more drying racks and laundry bags... and if the fibre's all good, I'll want a wool picker and possibly a drum carder/other fibre processing tools.  It's going to be an exciting spring!