My booty from Convergence 2012

I didn't get to attend Convergence but since it was in Long Beach I had to go!  Robert was sweet and tolerated me and a little shopping.   Now what to make? hmmm...

Stash busting-weekend weaving by the seat of my pants

Just like many other knitters and spinners I have this constant need to clean out and use up my stash of yarn!  I don't think I'm the worst of hoarders but I do tend to buy beautiful yarn and make a lot of beautiful yarn -even though I love it as it is, eventually I would like to make something with it.  Or give it to someone, or sell it.  Also, I really enjoy knitting socks and for some reason I keep being attracted to those variegated and multi colored sock yarns in the store and when I look at patterns I discover I really want to knit solid colored socks.  So I have a lot of these types of yarns and the ones that aren't hand dyed and super special might be nice as something other than socks.

A few months ago at one of my guild meetings a fabulous weaver Deb Jarchow shared a scarf she had made on her cricket loom out of stashed sock yarn.  It was really lovely was soft and warm not too fuzzy and a great use of the many colored sock yarn.  I have kept that scarf in the back of my mind ever since.  So when I found myself done with my recent big weaving project and not ready for another big project I decided to warp up my loom for one of these scarves.       

This is a great thing to do over a weekend.  I measured the warp in less than an 1/2 an hour 72” scarf + 22 inches of waste & shrinkage. I just used up the whole skein giving me 63 ends.  This is sort of backwards of the way I normally do things, but I didn't want to get too hung up in planning.
I decided to use a set of 10epi so the piece has a width of 6+inches.

With only 2 skeins of yarn I wound the bobbins I only got 6 1/2 of them. That worried me a bit because it wasn't quite enough.  I wove one bobbin finding that would give me 6” of weaving…meaning I would get about 36” altogether not quite enough for a good scarf.  To the rescue- The Internet!   I found another skein & ordered it for $8. Ok not too much expense but is it really stash busting if I have to buy one more skein?

I have concluded that the next round of yarn stash busting, if doing a scarf, I will be more careful with how much yarn I use for the warp. Maybe make it a bit shorter, thinner, maybe blend some left overs from sock knitting that matches there are many options.  It's all a good experience for me.  Making mistakes does allow for a lot of growth.