I'm taking part in what could be described as the ultimate stash down challenge on Ravelry. It's part of the Stash Knit Down group and it's called Race to the Bottom. Now my two sons would find that name hilarious - they're 6 and 2 and anything with the word "bottom" in it is highly entertaining at that age - but in this case it's a race to the bottom of your stash containers. 
Between September 1st this year and the end of February 2017 the challenge is to knit up your entire stash! I have decided to take up the challenge, in spirit at least. My declared opening stash yardage was 38,086 yards, just over 21 and a half miles, or coincidentally roughly the distance from my home to my place of work as the crow flies!!

While the idea is to decrease (or eliminate!) the stash, any yarn acquisitions don't come with a penalty so in theory it would be possible to work through the entire stash as of September 1st and still end up with more than one started with. However, since my Knitmeter tells me I have knitted over 24,000 yards in the last 12 months, I don't actually have enough stash at current rate of knitting to last me 18 months anyway. If I'm not going to run out and have to stop knitting (NOOOOOO!!!!!) there will have to be acquisitions into my stash.

​So far I've knitted my way through over 5000 yards since the start of the challenge. Onwards and downwards......!

I'm actually knitting someone else's pattern for a change! The weather has started to turn cold (and damp - drizzle, yuk!) and somehow my younger son has no mittens. Actually that's not entirely true. Emptying out the cold weather accessories bag revealed last year's mittens which are now too small (you can't count them as fitting if you have to curl your fingers up for them to be long enough!), one fleece Thomas the tank engine mitten and one shop-bought Spiderman mitten, both for the same hand! 
He needs new ones, and fast. I had this pattern already which I had bought in last year's Ravelry Indie Designer Gift-Along (more about that later). It's written for worsted weight, which I don't have except in kitchen cotton, so I'm using sock yarn held doubled which is working out nicely. The pattern itself is Wee Little Sheep Mittens from Birch Hollow Cottage. It's a very cute pattern in children's sizes, and if you don't fancy sheep there are foxes, raccoons, hedgehogs, frogs, gnomes, mice, cats and rabbits to choose from as well.

As soon as these are done I'll be right back into my own designs again. I have a beret pattern drawn up that I'm itching to cast on!

Recently I've been working on a shawl design. When I say "recently", I guess that's a relative term because I've actually had this particular shawl on the needles since July. It is now October. That's not like me. I'm usually a fairly monogamous knitter, perhaps two or three current projects at most, and I will normally keep going on something once it's started right through until the bitter end. Since I started this shawl, I have started and completed no fewer than nine (yes, nine!) other projects, and started one more which is still currently on the needles.
For some reason I couldn't stop myself keeping putting this one down and finding something else (anything else!) to do. It took me a while to work out what was wrong.
It wasn't the yarn. That's MadelineTosh lace in colourway Baltic.

This exact skein, in fact. Soft and squishy merino wool in a gorgeous variegated turquoise-blue colour scheme which is just so me.
It wasn't the pattern. I've been carrying the piece of now rather scrappy-looking graph paper about with me, drawing and adding to make it exactly how I pictured it in my head.

Finally I worked out what the issue was. It was the needles. 
My go-to knitting needles are my HiyaHiya sharp interchangeable circulars. I love them. No, let me clarify. I LOVE THEM! They are exactly what I look for in a knitting needle. Sharp points, 5" tips long enough for my knitting style (I hold the needles way back away from the end and I've found some circular needle tips just aren't long enough for me), smooth joins between cable and tip, and super-slick surface to allow the stitches to slide around quickly and easily.
However, those weren't the needles I'd been using this time. The problem was that I had started this shawl while I was still working on my Elphaba jumper and both needed the same size needle tips, 3.25mm. I only have one pair in that size. I'd looked online at the website of the retailer where I usually buy my HiyaHiya's (Athenbys.com - I can recommend them, their customer service is excellent!) and unfortunately on that day, the 3.25mm needle tips were out of stock. 
I ought to have waited a day or two for the tips to come back into stock. Oh yes, hindsight is a wonderful thing. Instead I pulled out my other two sets of 3.25mm circulars. I started out with my metal ones but quickly abandoned them, because the join isn't smooth (it's a peculiarity of the brand but there's a little pinch at the point where the cable joins the needle which is fine for DK or thicker, but lace weight yarn snags at it at every.single.stitch). I abandoned that one as unsuitable before I had worked beyond the first inch. 
Instead I went to my remaining 3.25mm needles, bamboo ones. Now, don't get me wrong. There is nothing whatsoever wrong with the needles themselves. Addi Bamboo circular needles are well-made, the cables are just flexible enough, the joins are smooth, and the bamboo is smooth. (I've had other cheap bamboo needles before that needed going over with sandpaper to get rid of splinters!) I used these needles on this project on and off for two months before it dawned on me that they just weren't meant to go together. Like chicken and jam, or ice cream and ketchup, great alone, incompatible together! And it was only the freeing-up of the HiyaHiyas and putting them on to this project that made me notice where I had been going wrong with the Addis.

I like my HiyaHiyas because they are very slick and very sharp. The Addis are smooth for bamboo, but bamboo needles are in themselves inherently "grabby". That's excellent if you're working with a very slippery yarn and need something that's going to hold the stitches to stop them from escaping, but wool is sticky enough that it will stay on the needles by itself. And while the Addis are fairly pointy for bamboo tips, they just aren't as sharp as the points on the HiyaHiyas, and when you're knitting three together, or purling two together through the back loop, you need something with a very sharp point on it.

To illustrate, here are the three needles in question. The first one is the metal circular. For a metal needle, it's also not terribly pointy. The second is the bamboo one, pointier than the first but still not quite pointy enough, and just too grabby. The last is the HiyaHiya sharp, definitely lives up to its name!

I'm so excited about releasing my latest pattern, No, Your Other Left. They are stranded colourwork fingerless mitts, not all that exciting in themselves, but I've loved them since I thought of the idea for them. Everyone who has seen the mitts themselves has had such positive comments about them, and my test knitters loved them too. 
The problem is that when you think up an idea for mitts in the late spring and then knit up the sample in the summer, it feels like a long time to wait for the weather to cool down enough to make it worth releasing the pattern in the autumn. But autumn is here now! It's been cool enough in the mornings to need a hat and scarf, even though the afternoons have been warm enough not to need a coat.
The colourwork is all charted, and the backs of the hands are interchangeable, so if you want "Left" on your right and "Other Left" on your left you can do that too. 
As always, the pattern is available in my Ravelry pattern store.
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