November Stash

I think that it's safe to say that I am well and truly now on a stash ban. Or at the very least a sock yarn ban. I went a little mad. I follow quite a few yarny people on instagram and I often envy the yarns they display. Particularly of the sock knitting variety. I then saw that Knit Picks was advertising free postage to the UK for orders over £40. Any sock knitter will tell you that is an easy target. I managed almost a month before I went online, had a look and subsequently filled a basket. It would have been too rude not to! 

I decided to mainly go for the more solid colours as I wanted yarns that would highlight patterns. I really need to go through my books and try some that I haven't done before. I also might want to try designing my own at some point next year and of course I would want a solid colour for that (maybe). All but one of the yarns have a merino mix base and are super soft. The dusky pink at the bottom is a highland wool mix. For anyone in the UK look for sock yarn it's called fingering weight in the US.

As for my shopping experience, I can safely say that it was worth it. Their website is filled with hard to resist goodies. The yarns I received are lovely and the colours very much matched the images. It was also very fast. A lot faster than I expected.

I splashed out and got some yarn from another US seller (again one I follow on instagram). This time it's an indie dyer called Orange Jellyfish Dream. The seller has an etsy page which is filled with lovely yarns. I had trouble narrowing my choices down to two. I also picked up a stitch marker holder which you can see at the bottom of the image.

Both yarns have a merino base and as you can see the purple has a lovely sparkle to it. My favourite though is the blue and I have decided that it will become socks for myself.

Of course I would rarely have a stash post without having something from my good friend Lisa. You will have seen this yarn from this months WIP page.  This is a double knit yarn in the donegal base. I asked Lisa to send me some to finish a blanket. It's super soft and lovely to work with.

Lisa also posted an image of this colourway on her FB page a while back. I requested it in sock yarn as I thought it was about time that my dad got some socks from hand dyed yarn. I thought it the colours would be perfect for him and I wouldn't mind knitting large socks since I would be using Lisa's yarn.

I thought wrong. My dad thought it was too girly! How is blue and grey too girly? Anyway, he picked out the purple as a much more manly colour. On the bright side I get to knit myself socks with Lisa's lovely yarn (the colour of which I happen to love).

I have linked all of these stores to my craft shopping page.