charity yarn

Posted on March 20, 2013 by Anastacia Knits

I know, I know, it’s Wednesday & I usually do a WIP Wednesday post. But that would involve actually having some progress to share… LOL I actually have managed to finish Jon’s worsted weight socks (awaiting photos) & I’ve got some more progress on his other pair of socks.. but other than that, the only things I’ve worked on is designs, designs, designs… you know, stuff I can’t share. I can’t even share a “what am I reading” post because I just finished 2 books & I’m actually not really reading anything. gasp.

I can tell you, I am working on two designs to submit to Crochetvolution, and I’ve been working on 2 new 12″ square designs for two different CALs for April 1st, part of my ongoing square CAL series. They’ve been a bit, well, error prone & they’ve gone through about 12 levels of editing… so far… I somehow suspect there’s still more. I’ve been slowly crocheting away on my current afghan design sample as well, but that’s really slow going. I’m making the 60″ across size, and I spent about 6 hours crocheting on it over the weekend… only to realize I had made a mistake the very first row I crocheted that morning… as in, I completely skipped one of the pattern rows. Entirely. So… I had to frog back 6 hours worth of work. The afghan is now pouting in the middle of my living room floor where I kick it every time I walk by.

So today’s post is my latest charity finds. Or, technically, Jon’s charity finds. First he found this…

It’s all acrylic, except for one skein that’s a 50-50 wool-nylon blend – the small dark blue skein you see on the top.

He mentioned that there was also some “lace” yarn that he saw but didn’t know if I would be interested or not. He took a photo of the yarn (good man) but the photo was pretty dark but I told him to go ahead & grab it if it was still there next time he went. The next day he came home with this

It’s some kind of cotton blend yarn, textured & a little fuzzy, and is definitely NOT lace yarn. I have 3 different colors – a white, a yellow, and a white with pale green specks in it. NO idea what I’m doing with it, but it’s nifty yarn all the same

charity yarn – yes, again!

Posted on February 4, 2013 by Anastacia Knits

We went to Savers recently, and Jon scored two car cases & some old Red line hotwheels cars. I also managed to score this

I also picked up this…

The black on the left, the cone, and the alpaca yarn came from Savers. The black is cotton, & there’s enough for a short sleeved summer top for me. the blue cone yarn is labeled Zephyr.On the right is 2 skeins of yarn I bought at AC Moore with my coupons.

You know how, when our hubby’s are a jerk, and they bring home flowers or chocolate? Well, mine’s well trained to bring home this…

charity yarn

Posted on February 3, 2013 by Anastacia Knits

Lately I was given a very, very generous charity yarn donation by a lovely lady. I grew up going to church with this lady, who taught Sunday School, sings in the choir, and knits and crochets. Back in the day when I sang in choir, too, I remember her crocheting away while singing – and I promptly started bringing mine as well.

About a year or so she gave me a lot of yarn, and that was the yarn I used for all of my afghans last year. At Christmas time she let me know she had a lot of yarn for me, and right before Jon’s birthday I got the call that she was done sorting & it was time to pick it up.

I quickly snapped this photo as I greedily snagged up bags of yarn, stuffing them into my car everywhere… it was also full of groceries for Jon’s birthday party, so thank goodness I have a big car!

I started taking photos of the yarn to share here, but I quickly realized that I had way too much yarn to photograph & share, but I can’t resist sharing some of it with you!

Wedgie decided this Mommy on the floor thing was a lot of fun, and decided to help.

Yes, he’s my cutie!

flash your stash: the last of christmas yarn wool and alpaca and mohair

Posted on January 24, 2013 by Anastacia Knits

Good morning! I want to share with you this morning the last of the Christmas yarn I was lucky enough to receive. My parents are very good about picking up yarn for me when they see it, & I’ve been slowly educating them so they know what good prices are. They mainly pick me up acrylic yarn for charity, but they occasionally score the good stuff. All the yarn I’m showing you today (my last & final day of flashing the Christmas stash) they bought in one large lot at a field auction we frequent in the summer. I have no idea what they paid for it, but my mom did tell me there was quite the bidding war going on!

You can’t quite tell but there are 4 balls of the self striping yarn, though none of the balls are full. It looks like it’s maybe a dk or a sport weight.

mmm… alpaca… I actually bought some of this exact same brand of yarn on vacation a few years ago & knitted it into a shawl I wear all winter long.

This is an 80% mohair blend. I’m super excited about this, I love mohair & it’s so warm & it’s so hard to find at affordable prices. It’s not at all itchy mohair, either, very soft & very nice!

wool in a very gorgeous shade of green, I think there’s enough here for a vest for ME!

wool… just your basic, every day wool in pink and green. yay for the basics!

wool in reds

More wool. The white yarn is 90% wool & 10% nylon, the rest is 100% wool I believe.

Great haul, yes?

Happy 40th, Jon baby! I love you!

flash your stash: more christmas yarn

Posted on January 17, 2013 by Anastacia Knits

So I thought I’d share with you more of the yarn I was gifted at Christmas time – can’t believe it was 3 weeks ago already!

First, Noro yarn that hubby bought for me when he took a day trip with his parents to Freeport, Maine
. He actually walked about 2 miles to buy this yarn for me – a mile one way, then a mile back to where he was shopping with his family!

Next, 3 odd balls of acrylic yarn that I missed including in last week’s yarn post (also from hubby from Salvation Army)

and a skein of superwash wool which will probably end up as slipper socks, and a skein of sock yarn

Good job, hubby! The sock yarn I’m thinking of stranding with something else, maybe, for slipper socks as well. All the thicker pairs of socks I knit years ago have completely felted up & / or are really holey, and none of them I really knit to fit well, so it’s time to crank out a bunch for the two of us… someday… some month… probably next year! LOL

I’ll share the rest of my holiday haul next week.

mystery yarn

Posted on January 14, 2013 by Anastacia Knits

Good morning! What are you up to today? It’s work for me, as usual on a Monday.

I wanted to share a quick post with you today. I am lucky that not only does my mother try to find me yarn, but so does hubby. He had a few minutes to kill at work one day last week (he drives a van for the elderly/disabled) & popped into Salvation Army, & came out with this…

Of course, before I got that nice photo to share, I took this photo…

Wedgie’s so helpful, isn’t he?

In the bags of yarn was this yarn from Big Lots…

does anyone know what it is, or what I can make with less than 50 grams of it?

it looks similiar to the ruffle yarn, but it’s as open or as wide.

That’s my boy…

christmas yarn: charity acrylic yarn

Posted on January 10, 2013 by Anastacia Knits

Yes! I got yarn for Christmas! and patterns and other fibery craft related goodies!

Today I’ll share with you the acrylic for charity!

All the above came from hubby’s thrifting & yard saling. Perfect timing too, as I was down to practically no charity yarn – I am actually working on the last of my acrylic now before my Christmas haul. This looks like alot, but really is only enough for about a month of crocheting at the most – probably more like 2 weeks if I don’t get distracted by other projects.

My niece Alyssa, who you saw in photos a couple of days ago, picked out this yarn for her Auntie A (that’s me!)

Good job, Alyssa!

vacation: thrifting

Posted on October 16, 2012 by Anastacia Knits

Anyone who reads my blog knows we are big thrift junkies. So of course, while on vacation, we had to go thrifting & antiquing – I mean, it rained a lot, what else were we going to do?

no, i didn’t buy these, but aren’t they cool?

I did buy this…

and this…

and this

and paid just $1 for each skein or bag of yarn. Mostly wool, one bag of acrylic, 2 bags of thread. I also picked up a couple more skeins of acrylic for $1 & a one pound of caron for $4.

We also walked around a mall quickly (we were trying to get warm & get out of the rain) & I saw this…

auction finds

Posted on June 26, 2011 by Anastacia Knits

Father’s Day we went to the field auction in CT like we do every year – it’s tradition that we go & meet my parents & spend most of the day. Like anything else – you never have any idea what you are going to find, until you go! I was lucky to find a big bag full of yarn, which I won for $7.50 as part of a larger lot – and I immediately resold some of the stuff in the lot, making back $2. A large part of it was a tangled up mess, thanks to hubby’s help I was able to reclaim this out of the tangles (I meant to take a before & after photo but forgot)…

(and in case you were wondering… cause I know you were… those bitty balls immediately went into 5 more chain stitch square kitty blankets, shown below)

I picked up a couple of pounders in the stack…

some more misc skeins…

this is mystery wool… (the grayish-white yarn looks like a heavy laceweight or light fingering)

some lion brand purple chenille

some odd hooks & a circ I’ll keep, plus a ton of straights I won’t keep & didn’t photograph…

Not shown: 3 skeins of homespun, half a crocheted afghan (frogged), several knitted scarves in progress (frogged), & a 2 stranded garter stitch knitted afghan with woolease yarn, some skeins still with the afghan, that still needs to be frogged.

Flash Your Stash #1

Posted on October 28, 2010 by Anastacia Knits

First, I admit I have a lot of stash. I don’t, however, admit to a problem. Just because some people go out at night, after a bad day, and get drunk, and I go to the nearest place that sells yarn (or go online), and buy fiber & yarn like it’s an endangered species. I prefer yarn; it’ll last longer! (OK, so I admit, after particularly bad days, I drink & knit)

Since I have a lot of stash, and it’s EVERYWHERE in our tiny, tiny apartment, I really have no way of photographing all of it. I thought I would, instead, show off some of the more unusual yarns in my collection, or my favorites, or whatever.

First, badly dyed & handspun (by me) bamboo yarn:

Two small skeins, that I still haven’t done anything with

More bamboo yarn:

That was the first time I ever navaho plied. I used it to make this:

I call it Handspun Cowl & you can download it free on Ravelry.

This is yarn that I hand dyed to create long stripes. I actually crocheted a blank, and then dyed it.

and turned that into this

That’s another one of my free patterns, the Half a Granny Square Shawl, shown in a shawlette version.

This is another yarn that I dyed. I took a thrift store sweater, washed it, recycled the yarn, and dyed it with kool aid.

These are the socks I made with the yarn (sorry, it’s a crappy photo)

And lastly, another self-striping yarn that I dyed. I took a thrift store sweater, washed it, took apart the pieces, and dyed the sleeves before frogging the yarn. It’s a simple way to make self-striping yarn. I used it to make the York Shawlette, another free pattern on Ravelry.