Hello..My Name's Liz and I'm a Hoarder

I was going to call this post Vintage UFOs. But, after looking at the pictures, I decided the AA theme suited it better. You'll see what I mean as you read on.

My daughter is hoping to go on a horse riding holiday in Transylvania next Summer. We told her she needs to save up some money towards it. You know, responsible parenting and commitment and all that. Well, she's about as good at saving as I am at dieting. And that's really crap.

So, this weekend, 2 of my sisters were dong a car boot sale. I said to Lily, if she wanted to sell some old clutter (believe me there's a whole loft full of it) she could put the proceeds towards the trip.

Saturday afternoon, we spent in the loft. I was clearing out. You know the drill. 3 piles. KEEP. CHARITY SHOP. RUBBISH. I was quick. Lily was doing the thing you must never do. The "oh, look at this" thing. The thing that takes all of the time. And England were playing France in the rugby at 8pm. And it was 5pm.

We fell out a bit. Ate our curry in near silence.

A bright and sunny day the next day, not to early, me and Mrs Happy loaded up the car. Oh no, I actually loaded up the car and off we went. This is me and 2 sisters at the boot sale. I am knitting the Tammy Beret from RYC Weekend book 8. I did finish it and shall post those pictures tomorrow.



Now, this is the point of this post. Check out what I found in the loft. I'm almost (but not) embarrassed to tell you the there were 79 balls of yarn in my loft, and that they had been up there, above my very sleeping head, for the past 8 years without me knowing about them. Oooops. I'm going to call them my reserve stash. It's not nice yarn, just emergency stuff. You know what I mean.



A friend of mine's elderly mum knits blankets for Africa. She's just moved into sheltered housing, and now there's 20 elderly ladies knitting blankets for Africa. The local yarn shop who would give them end of lines, and the charity shops, can't keep up with them. So I thought I would donate this reserve stash, which, let's face it, I didn't even know I had, to them. My friend said they would be ecstatic and promised a photo of the blanket(s) when finished. I'll keep you posted.

Onto my vintage ufos.....

When I was pregnant, some 16 years ago, I started knitting a blanket. Here it is



Yes, unfinished. I could blame my daughter, who came 12 weeks early. I hardly had time to finish a pair of bootees, did I, never mind a blanket. But you'll lose all sympathy for me when you see the next lot.



Now, that's quite pretty, isn't it? Not sure why I didn't finish that one. I don't even actually know what it was going to be.

Take a look at these sleeves. They are belonging to different sweaters (I hope)




OK, now I'll show you why I never finished some stuff....



You can hardly blame me for running away from the at speed, can you? Imagine sewing all those freakin ends in......shiver

But look, I could do bobbles



And cables



And chunky



And.....what the hell was that going to be?????



Ok, left hand in the air, right hand on heart.

I, Liz, have nearly knitted some seriously God awful shit in my life. But thankfully I saw the light before anyone wore it.

Well, a couple of things got through the net........