Day 1

Another attempt to resurrect my blog!  New Zealand has gone into lockdown for 4 weeks initially due to the grow of cases of covid19. I have been wanting to start blogging again as I find that Instagram  doesn't quite cut it with me. So, I decided that the lockdown and self isolation would be a great chance to create the habit of blogging.  My intention is to post daily for the duration.

The first thing I noticed is the quiet, no cars! I live in a quiet street but we have a bit of traffic as many use our small street as a shortcut.  It was strange to see cars parked in the driveways on a weekday.Watching the news it seems that NZers on the whole are following the rules, but then its only day 1. I am not sure what will happen when people start to get stir-crazy, as I am a solitary sort of person I think I will be okay, but 4 weeks?  

As I have severe asthma I have been advised that I have to self isolate and so even trips to the supermarket are out.  But I am okay as when it started to get bad in Italy I decided that it would eventually hit NZ and I gradually built up my supplies every week, so I have enough supplies for 6 weeks.  I will be a low on the fresh food, but as I have 2 apples trees, a fig tree and the grape vine producing fruit at the moment and feijoas will be ready soon.  as for veges I have silverbeet (chard), kale, the last of the tomatoes, pumpkins and butternut squash, beetroot, cabbage and celery.  So I will be good.

Today I did household chores - laundry, cleaned the oven and went through one of my food cupboards and threw out out of date food.  I am ashamed to say I had some dried fruit with a best before date of 2017!  I guess I don't eat a lot of dried fruit,lol. For lunch (which is my main meal) I had crumbed fish (hoki) potato and peas with tin peaches for desert.  In the afternoon I made some scones and treated myself to one with strawberry jam and cream. I finished reading a book on my kindle - Book 3 of  The Survivor Chronicles by Erica Stevens. There is the final book, but I am not sure that I want to read it in this present scary world. A bit too close to home! I quite like the Cozy mysteries books as pure escapism, I have several on my kindle that I haven't read yet. They will do when I want to escape the news.

For supper I had a sachet of Thai chicken soup with some bread and a nectarine, then I sat in front of the TV and a couple of programmes. That is more or less it, the first day of lockdowm done and dusted.

 

I couldn't find Lucy but eventually discovered her hiding in my stash behind the sofa!

Stash Busting

One of the goals I have set myself this year is to stash bust!  Like all yarnies I have yarn hidden all over the house, it seems to be a compulsion to get yarn and more yarn.  Non yarnies shake their heads in bewilderment when we say we need to get more yarn for a new project as we haven’t got what we need.  They just don’t get that we must have that particular colour that is floating around our heads.  But, we all get to a point where we say ‘enough is enough”, usually when we have bought some yarn and then discover it is lurking in our stash!  I have reached that point. 

 

I thought hard and long about why my previous efforts to stash bust have failed miserably.  I realised that am a colour geek and I have to  fit that fact in my  projects.  It is no good say that I will do a new project using my stash it will fail!

For example, I had 3 attempts to make Around the Bases but each failed, I put it doe to a failure within me as it certainly was not the pattern as it was awesome.  I realise now that I was trying to fit in colours that I wasn’t entirely convinced about.  Strangely enough when I look at the now they are okay, but I have no desire to carry on. 

At this stage I was happy.

 

Here I hated it so it never got any further, perhaps one day I will frog it back and use colours I like instead of trying to fit colours in from my stash.  I think half of the problem is that my stash is bits and pieces and when a project gets to a certain size, I am at a loss.  When I went out and bought specific colours for this project it was a success and I love it.

So, how does this realisation help me get rid of the stash.  I have to tank Zelna Olivier of Zooty Owls Crafty blog. ( http://zootyowlcards.blogspot.co.nz/search?updated-max=2018-01-18T15:44:00%2B)

She is making stash blankets for charity using multiple strands of yarn in magic balls and links to how to do the magic knot.  A clanging bell went off.  So the long and short of it I am doing the same, but first I thought of making rugs for the bathroom and bedroom using linen stitch.

For the bedroom

For the bathroom

 

 

And even a stash basket which was a CAL in the Our Happy Cal Place group on Ravelry.

I am so happy I now can buy yarn for new projects and not feel so guilty as the projects use yarn up so quickly.  Win, win all around.