Yarn in my Pocket

61) ...and I haven't even made it to Woolfest, yet!

After a fairly heinous mix-up last week re: holidays and work and other stuff, I'm grabbing a couple of days of holiday in the sunny North East, staying with my parents.  Who live conveniently within reach of Cockermouth, aka Woolfest.

Today, though, was Whitby and Staithes, where we witnessed the locals paddling:

and cycling:

Hmm.  Well, I suppose if it's good for horses, it's good for cyclists.  Maybe not so good for the bike itself, though.

Whitby is home to Bobbins, a very lovely yarn shop where I typically browse for an hour or so and then leave empty handed.  Today, though, I may have bought yarn:

Two skeins of Noro Silk Garden lite/sock, in beautiful soft, pale neutrals.  I'm not actually sure I can remember the last time I bought pretty yarn for myself, just because; I'm planning a lacy, garden party-style shrug with this little lot.

4) The state of the stash (installment 1)

Yes, it's that time of the year again.  How much yarn do I really have, and where is it? 

Two years ago I found out that I had over 92 kilometers of knitting yarn, or 43.7 kilogrammes of the stuff.  Thanks to a reasonably well-maintained spreadsheet, today it was only the work of an hour or so to find out that I now only have 64 km of yarn, or 28.5 kg.  Progress!  Or so it seems...

That's the *knitting* yarn.  I now have weaving yarn, dyeing yarn and machine knitting yarn.  That, my friends, is as yet uncatalogued.

There's also the spinning fibre (which can turn into knitting yarn or dyeing yarn or... yeah).  That is catalogued, although I don't think I've found it all as yet.  I have 2.4kg of spinnables.  Plus the rest of Rod, Jane and Freddy's fleece, which I am not yet ready to face.  This year, I really want to keep track of what gets used and when.  I'll try and check in with this, monthly.

My word

I've just entered my stash on Ravelry (courtesy of a really dull conference call, and having already emailed my stash spreadsheet to myself at work).  Now, bear in mind that this is *not* entirely complete, and it is also only my knitting yarns; no weaving or dyeing yarns.

According to Ravelry, I have 88 stash 'items' (i.e. yarn/colourway combinations).  That doesn't sound like a lot, until you realise that each of those items is probably, on average, one project's worth of yarn.  If it takes me a month (again, on average) to knit one project, that is over seven years' worth of knitting.

I know I have a lot of stash.  It's no surprise.  But this is a new way of looking at it.

Avoidance

OK, I've been totting up the stash.  I wanted to be able to present a grand overview picture of what yarn I have hidden away at the beginning of 2008.

It's taken a while.

I'm pretty bored with spreadsheets now, and I've given up striving for 100% completeness, but I can tell you that I have:

• 75.454 km, or 32.294 kg, of knitting yarn;
• 17.010 km, or  1.940 kg of weaving yarn;
• 84.552 km, or 10.765 kg of yarn for dyeing.

I'm particularly shocked by the dyeing stash; I haven't actually even got round to mixing my stock solutions yet, so where the *heck* did all that come from?!?  The vast meterage compared to the weight is telling; most of it is laceweight and/or sock yarn.

So, there we have it.  I'll do my *best* to update monthly on my stash reduction progress.

And yes, I'm aware that this doesn't even mention spinning fibre or the three fleeces in the garage.

On the positive side, I can also tell you that at the beginning of 2007 I had 93.952km, or 44.453kg, of knitting yarn at the beginning of last year.  So I have achieved nearly a 20% reduction by length, or a 25% reduction by mass, in my knitting stash over the last year.

Not bad going!

Confession time...

The yarn diet?

So broken.  Well, only by one skein of yarn - according to my rules - but broken, anyway.  I have gone over ten months without buying any knitting yarn, apart from my two 'get out of jail free' cards.  I have bought other yarn in that time - with the excuse that it was for weaving with - but none for knitting.

This, though, I bought.  And I have no excuse, except I wanted it.

See the shiny??

70% silk, 30% seasilk, 100% lovely.  I've been wanting to play with this for a while; and it's even undyed.  Oh, drool.  I have 150g of this, or 600m, and I think I'll be trawling through Victorian Lace Today to see what catches my eye.  And uses about the right amount of yarn.  And then I'll have to decide if I'm going to dye it.  And if so, what colour.

And whilst I'm at it, I'll have to try and update my yarn spreadsheet; I've let it get shamefully out of date.

Time to 'fess up...

I bought yarn.

I have been so, so good with my 'Knit from your Stash pledge of 2007.  As per my rules, I have allowed myself to buy yarn for weaving with; and have indeed done weaving with said yarn.  I have also woven with yarn I *originally* (i.e. pre-2007) bought for knitting with.  But now I'm confused.

The question is, if I buy more yarn for weaving with, and end up knitting with it, does that count as one of my 'get out of jail free' cards for the year?  Similarly, if I was thinking about a knitting project when I bought the yarn, and end up weaving with it, does that count?

Y'see, this yarn has been tempting me for some time, with the thought of weaving projects.  But then, I started thinking about knitting a cute little cardi, just as I was buying the yarn.  But then again, I don't think I have enough yarn for that, so maybe I'm back to weaving with it again.

And the object of my lust?  Artisan-spun, rare wool?  Exotic and luxurious natural fibres, hand-dyed with natural dyes?  A one-off that will truly never come again?  A keepsake from a wonderful event?

No.  100% acrylic from my LYS.  Stylecraft Apache.

The one with the green background (predictably) - Thyme.

I don't know what got into me.  Well, I do.  Beer.  Let that be a lesson to you.  Me.  Whatever.

Late February stash report

Well, it looks as though I've actually managed to reduce the stash *sliiightly* so farthis year despite having to buy yarn to complete Lily (and having most of one of those balls left over, to boot).  It's pretty clear, though, looking at that feeble graph, that I'm not going to be desperate for a yarn purchase any time this year (or next, if I wanted to keep it up):

Can you even see the dips in the lines?  No?  They're there, I promise you.  The top (red) line is the length of my stash in metres; the lower line is the weight of my stash in kilos.  I've been reducing the length but not the weight of my stash with my current spinning project.  Well, plying project, really.  More on that later...

It is fair to say that the only way we are going to see much of a reduction in my stash this year is for me to sell or otherwise directly dispose of some of it.  That's OK; I've identified a bunch of yarn that I'm not actually all that desperate to knit with, either because it was bought early in the Stash Acquisition Frenzy of the last two years, which means it's from before I became sufficiently discerning of quality, and when I was more discerning of bargainaciousness, or because my tastes have actually changed.

I am going to try and sell/give away one 'batch' of yarn a week; that might be via the destash blog, or to a charity shop, or to a more needy knitter than I; heaven forfend, it might actually be via a competition or two, even after the current guessorama is over!

My name is Alison, and I have bought no yarn for a month now.

Except for this.  And now this:

Stash damage:
   Cygnet wool rich 4ply, sagey khaki:    50 g, 205 m

In other words, another ball to finish that darn edging.  This better be the last.

I am, on the whole, really enjoying the freedom *not* to buy yarn, but today was my first real test, confirming my theory that I buy yarn as a destress mechanism when work has p!ssed me off (long story, not interesting).  Oh, and I suddenly realised that I didn't have enough cash for just the yarn (and the buttons - picture to follow) - so I had to make up my purchases to £10 so I could use my card.  Interesting that in the past, that would have been INSTANT YARN!  Today, what to do??

Patterns, of course.  But I found it reaaallly challenging to find a book that I wanted to spend my hard-earned $$ on.  I looked at Erika Knight's Glamour and Classic (I think??) - more on that later - and also Rowan's Beads, Buttons and Lace,  Scottish Inspirations and Classic Beach.  I ended up buying 'Classic Beach' because it has the best ratio of patterns I actually want to make vs. cost - and it's still not great.  I don't know if I'm overloaded and jaded after 18 months of intensive knit-purchasing, or if I've just become more selective, or if there is a lot of 'padding' in the current Rowan-published books, but I thought that the 'win rate' was pretty low in all of them.

Oh, and do we really need a whole book from Rowan on dog jackets?  I love my hound, but I don't think I'm gonna knit her a coat out of Kid Classic and then felt it.  And for anyone out there that thinks that they can carry off a whole sweater in Big Wool, let's all bear in mind that it can even make a whippet look fat.

Frankly, I think this little guy's expression says it all:

"I'm gonna bite your kneecaps off"