July 2014 Wrap Up

July was a rather frustrating month of crafting.  I met few of my goals.  I expected to get a lot done because I was home for the entire month, but this turned out not to be the case.  Since I was home for the entire month, I spent a lot of time catching up on home tasks that had languished while I was doing so much traveling between March and June.  It was excellent and necessary to get those things done, but it meant the crafting did not get done.

July Goals

HPKCHC Classes / Detention
  • One Row Handspun Scarf by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee
  • Granny Squares
  • A pair of plain vanilla socks
  • Irish Hiking Mittens
  • Diagonal Dishcloths
  • Sheplova Mushroom Quinn Bag
  • Hugo Monster
  • Detention: Finish MAPLE LEAF the Third
Quidditch
  • MAPLE LEAF the Fourth
Order of the Phoenix
  • Begonia Swirl Shawl
OWL
  • Ohio Valley fiber plied with Psalm 23 fiber
  • NGY Lux Top braid spun and plied
  • Sassy Bee batt spun and plied

July Finished Projects

I finished three granny squares, but they have to be redone because I accidentally used the wrong size hook.  I didn’t even start any of the other projects on the class list.

I finished MAPLE LEAF the Fourth in time for Quidditch and turned it in for full points!

I finished the Begonia Swirl Shawl in time for OOTP and turned it in on time.  Unfortunately, I included specific yardage in my B.R.O.O.M. and the shawl came in at less than that yardage.  I only got partial points for it.

I plied the Ohio Valley fiber with the Psalm 23 fiber.  I started spinning the NGY Lux Top braid.  It quickly became clear that this fiber wanted to be very thin and that therefore it would take a long time to spin and therefore there was no way that I would be able to complete my OWL.  I am still working on the NGY Lux Top braid and have not started the Sassy Bee batt.

July Stashdown

July was not a good month for stashdown, but I knew that it would not be good before the month started.  I order 8,000 yards of yarn at the very end of June and it arrived in July.  I needed this yarn because it is the yarn I am using for the MAPLE LEAF shawls and for dyeing experiments.  Each shawl takes 1.25 skeins of yarn and I have 9 more to knit.  I also worked out where I am going with my dyeing experiments and realized I needed several skeins for that.  I also purchased 4 skeins of yarn at my LYS, for another 1,760 yards of yarn added to my stash.  And the spinning I completed in July added another 1300 yards.

The Begonia Swirl Shawl came in at 612 yards, MAPLE LEAF the Fourth at 504 yards, and I used 400 yards for dyeing experiments.  That is everything that came out of my stash for the month.

  • July total: up by 9,631 yards (5.47 miles) of yarn.
  • YTD total: up by 13,637 yards (7.75 miles) of yarn.

Clearly, I’m doing the whole stashdown thing wrong!  I originally planned to reduce the overall volume of my stash by 10% over the course of this year.  Now I would be happy to show any reduction at all when compared with the December 31, 2013 stash volume.  Even that will be tough; I need to craft my way through more than a mile of yarn every month for the rest of the year and not acquire any more yarn!  I really do not know if I can do that.

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