a smaller mess / by Katherine Hajer

Now that the latest gift makes are done and delivered for the spring, I have been working on larger, ongoing stash-busting projects. The giant stripey blanket is back in rotation, in part because the leftover yarn from the mermaid afghans can be incorporated into the colour scheme and used up.

While I was checking how much yarn I had already set aside for this project, I realised there was only this much left (plus the mermaid yarn):

Now, you may be thinking to yourself, "er, Katherine, that basket is completely full." But that's when I raise my shaking hands into the air and cackle, "Yes! But it's only one basket!". When I started the blanket, I had two baskets plus a shopping bag. So getting it down to one basket is excellent.

Is it making a dent in the actual yarn storage requirements? Yes and no. I mean, once it's done, the blanket will have used up a lot of yarn. The broadest periwinkle and pink stripes in the photo below are made from single 100g skeins — already it's a heavy blanket. And it'll mean that I don't have to store stash yarn in the main sitting/working area of my apartment anymore. But the bedroom yarn storage — the bulk of the stash — is in a sad state. There are already two more blankets queued after this one to keep stash-busting efforts up.

Onwards.