Wow that was dorky. Please excuse me, I woke up to find Cody had left the tv on Children of the Corn, which sort of puts you in an odd mood for the rest of the day. Ok I don’t care I’m moving forward with this anyway.

First I want to praise a wonderful group blog called DeStash - Cash for Your Stash. I’d had some yarn from my stash that I wanted to sell for various reasons. Turns out that angora and I are not friends, which is funny because Melon’s fur is so similar. There was some yarn that I liked but would never ever knit with.

So I gathered it together and put it up for sale in my etsy shop for a while. Aside from the Vesper sock yarn, which went within hours of course, nothing else sold. I had joined the Destash group blog when I first heard about it but hadn’t posted anything because I wanted to get a better feel for the format. You know how that goes with online groups - it’s smart to lurk for a while to see the general etiquette and standard behaviors before jumping right in.

I found myself with some free time and a desire to sell that stash yesterday so I posted the yarn. It was easy. I uploaded the photos to flickr (avoiding the bad “sale” word that will get you banned, using the word “unclaimed” instead), used fds flickr toys to make some composite photos, then used the templates the Destash blog already has set up when you start to create a new entry. I already had the descriptions and details for the yarn on my etsy site.

I don’t know if it was particularly good yarn - some of it was. Or if I’d underpriced myself - which I tend to do. Or the quality of the photos - doubtful. Or using the flickr toy to make a composite photo - I’m voting for this one. All the yarn was sold in less than 12 hours. The only yarn that’s still up there is just waiting for an echeck to paypal to clear and I need to remember to take that down. Woohoo! Money for the cruise!

So I would like to praise the Destash - Cash for your Stash blog.

Now, I need your praise. Not for me (although that’s always welcome!) but for your favorite bulky yarn.

I’m making a cabled shawl with pockets for my friend’s grandmother and can’t decide what yarn to use. The pattern is from Knitpicks so they have some of their yarn recommended but I’m not sure about the colors.

She likes deep jewel tones - wine, blue, not green, maybe purple if it’s not too bright? and I like to use very subtle tweedy or heathered yarn with cables. I think it hightlights the depth. Not variegated unless it’s really subtle and no stripes. This is for a grandmother in Iowa so I want to keep it simple with rich colors. It needs to be really soft but not shed all over the place and not pill. Handwash only is ok.

I’m looking for 3.5 - 4 stitches an inch on US 10 needles. I don’t really want to double up the yarn as I think that would be too complicated to work with on this so I’d like to stick to bulky or thereabouts. A little bigger or smaller is ok though.

I need it soft, colorful, and the ability to get 880 yards of the same dye lot for under 50 bucks. I’d spin the yarn for this but I’ve got way too much going on right now. I’m not adverse to discontinued lots or ebay. I’ll probably end up going with Knitpicks’ recommended yarn but I wanted to see what else is out there.

Hey, since this friend works like a block from Artfibers so I might give her a list of requirements to bring to the shop during lunch so she can pick it out and send it to me to knit! That would be fun! LOL no I don’t think we could get 880 yards of anything from Artfibers for under even 100 bucks I’m just kidding.

So please praise your favorite bulky yarn!