The Great Destash

It has recently come to my attention that I have roughly 6 miles of yarn. Before you get excited, about a third of that is super fine lace yarn and the rest is almost-as-fine sock weight yarn. Yes, it's a lot, but it doesn't take up nearly as much a space as I know you're imagining it does!

Still, that number is a tad staggering, so I've been making some stash-busting efforts, killing some leftover half-skeins and the like. My first find was a little ball of Karabella Aurora 4 that I used to make Walker's mother some gloves for Christmas. I hardly ever use sport-weight yarn and while I am hoping to eventually make a sport-weight argyle vest, this is neither a fiber nor a color I intend to include. I've got some Knit Picks Telemark for that.
So what else could I do with it? It's not enough to make anything practical. Instead, the kitties have a new toy elephant:I found the pattern on Ravelry and it's by Christine Landry. It was super easy and only took a couple of hours. I since sprayed it with catnip and Little Kitty has been enjoying it quite a lot. You can see her foot in the background, waiting to strike!

My next destash effort was to get through the pile of DK yarn I also have lying around. It's all either merino or alpaca, so I thought it would make a wonderful addition to my growing Etsy pile. Here it is, your first Etsy sneak peek, the Antique Leaves Hat:

I used Knit Picks Bare superwash merino for the white and their DK Elegance, an alpaca/silk blend, for the green. So lovely though the yarn is, machine washing is not advisable.

The leaves pattern is from an antique German pattern book that's been scanned and posted to the internet. Now, I don't read a lick of German, but the patterns are absolutely beautiful. My next Etsy project, the Antique Star Beret, is inspired by the same book. I was unable to complete the whole leaves pattern due to the amount of green in my stockpile and that I didn't want to make the folded flap any taller, but I think it reached a good stopping point. Here is a closeup of the pattern.

The top portion of the hat is just straight stockinette with some eyelet columns running up the sides. You can't see them in this picture, but later I'll model it for the shop and you'll see them more clearly then. I'm not as pleased with the way it folds. I pressed the heck out of it, but you can still see some of the eyelets poking out at the bottom. It looks much better on someone's head, but all the same, I am a wee bit disappointed. Here's hoping the next in the Antique series comes out better.

Now that I have 7-8 products ready to go, I am going to start working on cleaning, photographing, and prepping them for sale. I am also going to be working on prettifying the site with welcome messages, shipping instructions, and the like. The thing I am most stuck on is a name. Do any of you have any good suggestions? I don't think "Bad Cats, Good Knits" is going to cut it. I would appreciate any input you might have! If all goes well, I should have it up and running very soon.