The Big Marl

The Big Marl popped up in my Ravelry pattern highlights the day it was released. Sent me straight to my stash, then to my swift and ball-winder. This project absolutely eats yarn; I can see why Beata designed it, it's fun, simple and great for single skeins of hand-dyed yarn.

I haven't used a single scrap of Hedgehog Fibres in mine. I've used nearly all the yarns I bought at the Wool@J13 knitting/yarn festival earlier this year.

I feel as though I'm getting over hand-dyed yarns right now, so I can appreciate them but I'm becoming less impulsive with buying them (almost). It's funny, they're lovely things to own but they make me feel a bit wrong when I have a LOT of them, it feels so excessive to me. A few years ago I think my stash was pushing 70, it really was getting to the point where it was making me feel greedy, there was yarn stuffed and stacked everywhere and I would still have to buy more for certain pattern releases...
Then there is the small matter of changing taste in yarn, so I found that my taste was changing faster than I could knit my stash.
EBay has been brilliant as I've gradually worked through my stash (selling it), eBay is a great place to sell yarn, unravelled Shetland Spindrift, unravelled Lopi, scraps of this and that, even my own hand-dye experiments - all sold, gone, money recouped.

I have a guilty pleasure on ravelry, I like to look at yarn collectors' stashes, real collectors. I simultaneously marvel at and recoil at the crazy amount some people have.