Account for 2013

I bought an awful lot of yarn in 2013.  So much that I dare not say it here.

During the last week in 2013 I had an idea - 2014 could be the year I didn't buy any yarn.  As I toyed with the idea it started to seem familiar, and looking back here I read that I went on a yarn diet in November 2012.  It did last several months; it was in April that I started buying more indiscriminately, and by and by I forgot all about the diet.

Now I realised that I really could not do without the pleasure of buying yarn.  I just need to restrict what I buy, and I must stick to the list I made up a year ago:

1.  I can buy yarn to add to my collections, and the list of my collections is quite fluid, so it gives me plenty of scope.

2.  I can buy yarn to add to existing plans for projects.  I must not buy anything that would involve new plans.  This can be tricky, if I find something I really want.

3.  I can buy yarn required for a project in progress or that I am about to start.

4.  I must look at colour of yarn, and avoid bright colours and white and black.  It is taken for granted that I will stick to yarn in natural fibres.

This leaves two groups of yarn:

Yarn for my standard blankets.  So far I have bought anything that I could conceivably use, and that is very extensive.  So, for the next year I will have more than enough without buying any more.  I will reassess in 2015.

Extra nice yarn.  By this I mean hand spun, hand dyed, expensive fibres.  You find this in individual balls, and I buy.  It is often too nice for the standard blankets, but what else do I do with it?

So it would be nice if I could avoid buying these.  That is all.  I think this can keep me happy.

As far as knitting is concerned, 2013 has been a bad year.  I thought I had finished little.  My friend's sweater set me back, because I stopped doing work on finishing blankets, and at this moment I have five blankets waiting to be finished.  I also have a number of unfinished garments.  I have always been proud not to have any UFOs, but counting them now I have one pair of socks, one sweater and three cardigans unfinished.  So I was surprised to find that adding up the few things that I did finish it came to 9.3 kg, proof that my speed of knitting has not slowed down.

And to finish, just because a picture is nice, a close up of blanket #158.

The next blanket

The next blanket, #158, was going to be white pink and yellow, but the Drops mohair introduced a shade of green as well.  It was worth it, because it made the blanket so soft.  Admittedly the much thicker pink mohair helped too.  I attempted to use up some of the yellow yarns, too, and I succeeded to some degree, but there is still a lot left.  It is a nice blanket, no jarring colours, thick and soft.

I unravelled a Marimekko cardigan.  The pure wool yarn is so soft, and so easy to unravel.  The shade is much too strong for this blanket, so it will have to wait for another one.

The other sweater was a man's alpaca sweater, brand name Sol.  The yarn is nice.  It is slightly awkward to knit with because it is too strands not plied together.  This one was easy to unpick, too.