Reckoning

I spent an evening this week going through my stash. It had to be done. What do I take with me to France, what goes into storage until we have a longer-term place to live and what gets de-stashed. It was hard.

We knitters do get a little odd about our stashes, don't we? At the end of the day it's just yarn, but in reality there seems to be a lot more caught up in the strands. After much sorting and re-sorting and gnashing of teeth I had a big box of purged yarn and 6 bins for storage. And that's all of it. Every back of the closet, stuffed in a drawer, trunk of the car (ahem) meter of yarn is accounted for.

Some surprises:

• Most of the purged yarn was easy to part with (what was I thinking of when I bought the pastel mint green scary shiny baby yarn). Some of it will find a better home with other fiber artists, some will likely end up in the thrift shop. Overcoming that mental barrier that says "you can't get rid of that, it's yarn" needs be done only once. After that it hardly hurts at all.
• I don't have a sweaters worth of anything. A lot of the stash is comprised of leftovers and "one off" skeins. I'm okay with that. I've been knitting lots of small things lately, so these quantities do get used up.
• I do have a couple of shawls worth. Thought I knit less of it last year, I am surely a lace junkie. And apparently I can buy yarn for lace a little more impetuously and tuck it away out of sight. Of course this is in no small part because a shawls worth of yarn is a lot more compact than a sweaters worth of yarn (even if similar in yardage). Also I can guesstimate and buy a shawl yarn I lust after without having a pattern in mind, I would be much less likely to do that with a sweater.
• I very little cotton. And if you subtract dishcloth cotton I have almost none. I should probably either come to terms with cotton or give up on it entirely. This should be a post in itself.

Less surprising (Zimmermaniac that I am) is that I have quite a bit of good, plain, solid wool. And there is some sock yarn. Fortunately sock yarn doesn't count.

So it's tidied and sorted and packed away. There's only one way to celebrate this sort of thing.... Buy yarn!


I know, clearly I'm past help. None of this is going into the bins though. That sock yarn on the left is for a pair of mindless striping socks for me. I suspect with all the chaos in the next few weeks I'll need a project like this. The lovely green on the right is Cascade 220 and is going to be cast on very soon. It's become colder here, will be colder still in the alps and I've been saying I need a hat for a while. That green is a reminder that spring will come.

The tweedy brown is Elsebeth Lavold Silk Wool, surely one of my top ten yarns. That one's going to France. Another hat, I think, something lighter for when the days begin to warm. Mostly (and irrationally, I know) I just want a skein to take with me.

The alpine booties are nearly ready for felting. There is a mistake in one of the heels (3 am knitting again) but nothing that will be noticeable once they're done.


Should be the first FO of 2008.