Shopping the stash

Or, why you should have at least a SMALL accumulation of raw materials for your craft, especially if you live (like me) in Beyond Far East.

I have a very large amount of sockyarn. (I almost said "a literal ton" but it probably doesn't amount to that. I wouldn't be surprised if I owned close to a ton of books, though: books are heavy)

Anyway. I found a couple patterns I want to do in the near future.

first, a pattern I kind of fell in love with (largely for the name) and was willing to pay for: Vintage Fairy Lights which is very cute and very sweet and they show it made in a speckle yarn.

And I have some of that! This is a colorway called (IIRC) Cosmic Wonderdust. (Madelinetosh)

But when digging it out, I found a dark-horse contender I might also consider: a skein of gumball-colored Lion Brand that I remember buying on a shopping trip with Laura and I was laughing about how it was objectively kind of ugly, but I still liked it:

Yes, those both have roughly the same amount of yarn (about 400 yards), they are just differently wound. I'm strongly leaning towards the first one (Cosmic Wonderdust) though because the pattern seems like one that will work up best on a very light and not too busy yarn.


second a freebee: Socks for the Deputy Headmistress (Another Harry Potter inspired pattern; the headmistress in question is Minerva McGonigall).

It's a pattern that DEFINITELY needs a solid color - it's a knit-purl pattern and those get lost in a multi yarn. But I found several that will work, I will just have to decide which one is best.

If Minerva McGonigall wore socks, what color would she wear:

Blue (though in real life, it's a little more turquoise than true blue), purple (another Lion Brand, the colorway is named "Grape Soda"), sparkly grey (you can't see it but both the grey and the green have little sparkles shot through them) or sparkly green?

(Personally, I am *thinking* sparkly green....though none of those are really Gryffindor colors, are they? But I also like the idea of the purple).

For me, this is one of the most fun parts of projects: finding the right yarn for a pattern (or the right pattern for a yarn).