I had tried to send it Priority Mail, in one of those neat flat-rate boxes, but I couldn't get the system to print out the label and take my money. I could print the sample label, but not my label, even without postage. I tried restarting my browser (Firefox), using another browser (IE), not buying postage, everything. All I got was a trouble message. So I went with UPS. It was a lot easier and just a little over four times as expensive.
I'm back working on my Clapotis. Let me go get a snapshot right now. Wow, I just discovered that I don't need to start up any software to transfer photos from my camera to my computer via the USB cable; I hadn't known that. OK, here are three photos.
First, the whole thing, with the growing ball of yarn:
There's too much gold in the yarn for it to look too good in my living room. The chaise is plum and a lot darker than it looks in the photo (the camera tries to make the image about 18% gray, so it lightens dark things sometimes). Plus, purples are hard for digital cameras to deal with.
That ball of yarn keeps getting bigger, not smaller, as I knit. It's also getting rounder. When I took it off the ball winder, it was a nice, compact little cake of yarn, not the big round ball it is now. It doesn't feel a lot softer now than when I cast on, either. I cheated and weighed it last night, though. I've knitted 46 g and there's 68 g in the ball. I could have made the scarf a little wider now that I know that. It's 36 in. on the long side, 31 in. on the other, 9 in. wide at the end with the dropped stitches. Of course it's not blocked yet. I think it's about half done.
A close-up of the end, with the dropped stitches:
My husband accused me of knitting this pattern because I enjoyed dropping stitches. He might be right.
And a close-up of the other end, with undropped stitches, too.
You can see that I just dropped the last stitch and it hasn't been pulled out as tidily as the others.
Now, about my stash. I got tired of rummaging through bins and boxes and decided to get more organized. I had most of a nine-cube box of grid storage out in the casita (golf cart) garage, so I brought it in and put together as much as I had connectors for. Then I ordered more connectors, more grids, wheels, and shelf holders. They're supposed to be here on Wednesday or so. Meanwhile, I couldn't bear to wait and I started loading up the cubes, as you can see in this photo.
This is not quite every skein and ball I have of hand-dyed and hand-painted yarn. I started sorting it into the cubes just to see what I had. What a shock! I had no idea I'd accumulated quite so much. Thank heaven I didn't pay anything like list price for most of it. Some of those skeins and balls cost less than a dollar each.This looks like a lot more yarn than it really is, though, because I piled it all at the front, like books are shelved. There's a whole bunch of empty space behind that yarn, so that the cubes that look half full are barely a quarter full. It's a lot of yarn, I admit, but it's not as bad as it looks. Does that sound like a rationalization to you, too? It sure does to me.
Let's see, the bottom left and center cubes right now are all Noro. The bottom right cube is ribbon, mostly CPY Party, and hand-spun, hand-painted silk. The top left cube is sport weight, the top center is sock weight, and the top right is a mixture. There's lace weight yarn on the right, hand-dyed chenille in the center, and hand-spun, hand-painted silk on the left, with hand-dyed boucle at the back. On the top right and center is a base layer of Great Adirondack in various weights and colors, with Katsura boucle rayon and boucle silk on the left. Piled on top of that is Schaefer Blossom, Blue Heron chenille, and a lot of other hand-painted brand, mostly from independent dyers.
This structure is going to go into the 5-ft x 5 ft walk-in closet here in my office. There will be three more cubes on top and wheels on the bottom (where else, I hear you say), with shelves in the middle of some of the cubes. I hope to get all my yarn organized. I've still got quite a bit of regular yarn to put away too. For example, I've got an entire under-bed bin of Lion Brand Microspun, which I bought for about 30 cents a skein. Then there are three bags of Jumbo Merino from Elann, plus about another half bin of it from eBay.
I've knitted up about 60-75 balls and skeins since August. That may not sound like much, but the most any single project took was three and a half balls of chunky wool. Scarves just don't take a lot of yarn. All of those projects have been given away, too. I don't have any lying around, since the UPS guy just picked up the box for Pennsylvania.
I'm thinking of selling some of the Noro and Schaefer yarns. For example, a huge skein of loopy mohair, no matter how beautifully dyed, just doesn't fit my needs. With one of my main recipients allergic to wool, the Noro isn't too practical, either, not with so much merino and BFL (blue-faced Leicester, a breed of sheep) on hand. If I get brave and venture into e-trade, I'll post the eBay sites here. It probably won't be before fall, though. Who wants to buy wool in April?
Honesty compels me to mention that the walk-in closet isn't exactly empty right now. It's got a bunch of beading stuff in it, mostly very organized in roll-around carts with shallow drawers. One of those carts is up in Lancaster, but the others are here. I'm going to roll them out, roll the cube unit in, and then roll most of the carts back in. I think one of them might go to the casita garage, since it doesn't have craft supplies in it. It's mostly got cables and stuff in it, so it doesn't need to use prime space.
You may have noticed the mostly very organized there; I've got to organize all of the bead stuff, too. I can't do it all until the cart in Lancaster returns, but I should be able to put most of it away. That cart mostly has seed beads in it, so I can put the larger beads where they belong here.
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