Stash Acquisition of a Different Sort

Happy Thursday!

Today, I have stash acquisition of a different sort.

In March 2013, I started knitting my Freeport Vest. It was right after we had moved into our house here in California, though I had purchased the yarn at Stitches Midwest in 2011. I picked the size that would fit me best at that time in my life (which was a 52" and it was just going to be a little big as the next size down would be just a smidge too small - I was hanging around 50" at the time). In true "me" fashion, I didn't properly swatch and, thus, my sweater came out even larger than intended. To be fair, it didn't grow a ton...it maybe wound up being 2" wider, overall. But that still put it at 54" when I had finished in October 2013, which was just before I got pregnant with Stormageddon. That was after a bath where I had an internal panic when I saw it getting bigger and bigger and bigger. It didn't get that much bigger but it was big enough. My gauge was good but that bath made it grow a bit. Oops.

So, when I had finished this vest in October 2013, I didn't weave in ends because I wasn't 100% satisfied with it. The collar wasn't laying correctly and I was internally debating about ripping it out and doing it over again, in hopes that I could tame it into proper form. Eventually, I decided to just weave in the ends and call it good.

And then I wore it out and about......exactly ZERO times.

So, for the majority of the last two years, this unloved FO has been hanging around in my yarn closet, gathering dust. I'd pull it out and try it on here and there but I just wasn't happy with it. Even while pregnant, it didn't fit correctly, though it fit better over the baby belly.

A few weeks ago, I posed the question on Ravelry as to whether I should reclaim the yarn and the overwhelming majority (meaning all of five people out of seven that answered) said I should rip it out and reclaim the yarn.

That's how Tuesday evening went. I had to find all those ends I wove in (which was kind of a pain in the butt, honestly), unpick a few things, and rip it all out. Of course, it got interesting when I had four different balls of winding going on at once from the arm split and two colors of knitting.

It went from this (pay no attention to my not-woven-in ends):

.....to this:

The top half of the above photo is right before I started unpicking ends. The bottom half is what I wound up with at the end. The big ball in the back on the left is approximately 300 yds. I had spit-spliced the yarn so that is actually three skeins balled into one. The three larger plain balls on the right are about a skein each and the four little plain ones are about a skein total. The multi-colored darker one is just over a skein. So, we have about 750-800 yds of reclaimed Malabrigo Chunky yarn (which comes in around 100 yds/skein).

They're currently still sitting in these balls in a bag but one of these days I'm going to wind them back onto the niddy-noddy, tie them off, soak them, and hang them to dry so I can reuse them for something.

I did entertain the thought of remaking the vest in a smaller size (as I'd now easily fit into the XL - 48" and could maybe pull off the L - 44").......and I still might but I'm not counting on it. I did take my gauge information before I frogged it and it was about 14 sts x 21 rows = 4" stockinette square, which is the same as the gauge listed in the pattern...but I was working on US #9 and US #10 needles. So, somewhere in there, something was slightly amiss, changing things just enough over a large area. Oh well.

So, while this isn't a traditional stash acquisition, it's still yarn coming back into my stash :)


I hope you're having a lovely Thursday! I'll be back tomorrow with my Monthly Goals and maybe an FO post. We'll see if my model cooperates.