janestarz | Sock Super Stashing!

My revelation that I only had 3 colours to choose from for the Qualifying Round of Sock Madness 12, came with a creeping dread. I checked the specs -- specifications of what kind of yarn you'd need for the contest -- and found more solids than colourwork socks. More than 3 solids of 300 meters.
Since a 100 gram skein holds ~410 meters of yarn, I'd need full 100 gram skeins or two 50 gram skeins for the rounds.

Luckily, I have a jar of money saving up for a warm sweater. I plundered the jar and we went to Bloemendal Wol in Tongelre to spend it.
I've never been to this particular LYS but it was nice. Located in "Sectie C" -- an old repurposed factory complex just like our own Plan B.
I spoke to the owner, as I was looking for sock yarns and they had a rather mixed assortment of yarns. Lots of baby merinos and linen-cotton blends for cardigans and baby sweaters, as well as most of the popular new Borgio di'Pazzi line. But aside from Drops and the Lang Supersoxx line, not a lot of sock yarns.

She showed me the options, told me Drops was going out of their stocks, as their terrible mandatory sales were bad for her business. She was selling off the remaining skeins at a discount: € 1.98 per 50 gram skein. Now Drops isn't the best sock yarn, but on a budget it'll do fine. I picked up black and white, two colours of blue, some more of the petrol and a dark red. I also picked up a celery-coloured Adriafil sock yarn which was a little more expensive, but I think it will be gorgeous for a cabled sock as it's a light green colour that will show off the cables well. At 8 euro per 100 grams, it's a little more expensive than the standard self-striping or multi-hued Meilenweit I have a ton of, but I'm very interested to see how it knits up.

And because you can never have too many sets of DPNs, I also picked up a set of KnitPro Carbonz 15 cm DPNs at 2.75 mm, my standard sock gauge. I also kind of asked her to order the lacquered wood DPNs from KnitPro in that size, as they are my favourite set at the moment.

That meant I could do a bit work to get my stash back up to date, taking pictures and adding the new skeins to Ravelry. It's a very easy way to browse the stash if you can do it from your browser. Offline my sock stash takes up two Ikea Kallax boxes: one for variegated yarns and now also a full one for the uni-coloured skeins. And they can only fit closed because I took out some skeins and but them in baggies for easy acces when I'm bored.

To be honest, I'm not sure I'll ever finish the stash! But I'll have fun doing it. It's a shame my fingers are so tired, otherwise I'd pick up a new project right away. I am forcing myself to take it easy, the Madness has only just started.