I have a confession to make; up until last week my stash was homeless. It’s been only around 5 years since I started taking knitting more seriously, and back in the day I only had the odd ball of (acrylic) yarn and acouple of needles lying around. It was hard to imagine I would ever buy more yarn than I could use up immediately. Boy, was I naive.

In contrast to my stash, which is still pretty young, I’ve always been quite fanatic about buying books. The book buying has always been at a speed that I could not possible keep up with, reading wise. Just the pure joy of buying a new book, leafing through it in the book shop, occasionally smelling it (yes I do that), and then proudly storing it away in your book case (in alphabetical order of course). If I’d stop buying books nows, I’d probably could happily read on a couple of years.

And now the same has happened with yarn. The squishing, selecting colours, and maybe occasionally smelling it (yes I do that). Especially sock yarn is a weakness for me, it’s usually just one or two skeins so it is easily bought. And I do love my sock yarn stash so much (picture above is just the sock yarn)!

When I started to get more into knitting, I started putting my yarn and materials in cardboard boxes or bags. The stash was spread all over the house and there was no order in it whatsoever. As I said, my yarn was homeless. Lately however the chaos of the boxes and bags lying around everywhere and the lack of order started to annoy me to no end. So now I’ve proudly created a home for it in the form of drawers in a dresser. And I have to say it is such a relief to easily find things!

How about you, do you have a system for organising your stash?

So last week we had some extreme rainy weather, which got me all excited for fall and all kinds of warm knitting adventures. I nearly cast on a warm sweater but managed to resist. However I failed to inhibit myself when it came to fall inspired yarn shopping. And boy, was I wrong about the weather!

Today temperatures are reaching up to 34ºC, and it doesn’t look like it will cool down much in the next couple of weeks. So it was a little odd receiving parcels full of knitting stuff. Nevertheless I’m still very excited about my purchases, although I’m afraid some of them will have to wait receiving my full love and attention until my overall state of being is less melting.

What did I buy exactly? First of all I’ve been eyeing this pattern book by Ann Kingstone for a while now. The designs are breathtaking (and as the name already suggests) stranded knits. One of my favourite designs in here must be the William sweater. I can really recommend checking out this book!

Yarn-wise I’ve been wanting to buy something to make the Ginny’s owl cardigan from the unofficial Harry Potter knits magazine. If you’re anything like me the idea of a combination between Harry Potter and knitting will make your heart beat a little bit faster. I adore this shade of purple (30 Damson) from Rowan Pure Wool DK, I think it will suit the pattern well!

Lastly, I figured you can never have too much shawl knitting yarn, right? (RIGHT?!) The lovely purple-ish skein is from Araucania Botany Lace and the two coral coloured skeins are Malabrigo Silky Merino. I don’t have an exact project in mind for these yet, although I have some vague ideas. I’m of course always open to suggestions 🙂

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to sit in the fridge.