Stash Busting 2013

Hello friends!
Yes, it's been a little while since I last posted on my blog, sorry! I did miss you!
But the reason I haven't posted for so long is because I have been a busy bee :-)
I have been making a lot of new things & writing lots of new patterns :-) (yay!)
I have written my very first proper womens cardigan knitting pattern, which will hopefully be released very soon. It's in the testing stage at the moment!
And some of the other patterns I have written so far this year are for a knitted "kerchief" style scarf, with pom poms (or pom pons if you prefer ;-) as well as various crochet baby booties & hats, some more knitted socks (yippee!) and a new lacy pair of knitted fingerless mitts in 4-ply or sock yarn. All of these patterns are in the testing stage at the moment, so they will be ready very soon!! (Can you tell that I'm pretty darn excited?!)
Anyway, while I've been making all these new things I have been trying my hardest to only use yarns from my stash. So far I have done really well. But it's ever so tempting with so many new, delicious yarns available and it's only going to get harder as we head into Winter (here in the Southern Hemisphere).
One of the larger projects I have started is the Rainbow Blanket pictured above. I had a massive stash of Stylecraft Special DK in my stash that I had purchased AGES ago for another project that never happened. I usually steer well clear of acrylic yarns as I find them quite revolting to work with (the feeling my hands gives me the heebie jeebies), however this Stylecraft yarn does not do that. As far as acrylic yarn goes, this one is really great. If you need to use acrylic yarn for some reason, I can recommend this one happily :-) And it comes in over 50 different colours!
I had well over a kilogram of this yarn in various colours so I decided that a Rainbow Blanket would be a sensible plan for it. I really struggled to settle on a particular design, as there are so many AMAZING crochet blanket patterns going around & I didn't want to make anything with too many little motifs, because I didn't want to be weaving in a bazillion little yarn ends. Long vertical stripes are good for avoiding too many yarn ends!
I just made up the pattern, but as you can see, it's nothing too complicated. When it's finished I'll pop up the pattern, so you can make one too if you like :-)
I'll post more pictures of the blanket as it progresses!
What crafty things have you been doing lately? Share in the comments!
xo Shara