Figuring Stuff Out with Stash

I'm thinking I'm some newfound genius for using my terrible stash of age-old acrylic to knit up swatches. Well, they're not really swatches. I tend not to swatch. But I needed to test out some patterns for a new knit rectangle I'm making to replace the knit triangle I lost. (I'm saddened to this very day.) I had two patterns to work with. Both were free, one was here and the other one from the lys. I used my foul stash to test these patterns out and decide on one instead of actually knitting the tests on my yarn of choice. That way, I didn't have to unravel the whole pattern and weaken the yarn before I started.

I selected the bumpy pattern. It actually uses up more yarn than I anticipated so I’ll have to make another trip to the yarn store sometime. (Oh darn, I note sarcastically.) The benefits of my stash busting paid off in that I learned the pattern. I am a mess at four row patterns. Unless the pattern is the essence of elementary, I can never figure out whether I’m on row 2 or row 4. So you can see the errors on my swatch that I figured out by the time I got to the real yarn.

It feels so good to get rid of stash. I've been living with this acrylic for about 20 years. It hails from the days of scrunchy socks. I hate looking at it and I have no idea what keeps me from depositing the whole mess in the garbage. Oh well. At least it’s made itself useful.