knit through my stash

I’ve definitely made progress on this one. I’ve gone from having several boxes and bags of yarn to one shoe organizer and a basket of current projects. I’ve bought yarn for specific projects, but I haven’t “stashed up” or hit sales. I do have some yarn that’s just never going to be anything. I decided to start back in on a project that just needed a little kick in the pants, only to find that I’d knit something six inches too wide. I don’t plan on taking it apart and re-knitting it, so for now that’s still hanging around the house. I also bought too much yarn for a friend’s present (like, double), so I guess I’ll be making an extra for charity. It definitely feels good to have the extra space in my closet. I don’t feel as twitchy about knitting now that I know that there just isn’t as much of it to be done.

For the last few months, I’ve been going after this goal for real. I’m tired of a lot of the things that have just been hanging out in my stash. I’ve gone through a lot of the yarn that was there for a while and I’m down to one box of weird stuff. There are two or three potential blankets in there, but some of the things that I’ve had sitting around are harder to deal with. For instance, I have this skinny, skinny yarn that isn’t useful for most things, so I’m very slowly making a bandage out of it for a leper colony. It’s really not good for much else and it’s pretty slow going.

I did make a ton of things for the last a4A drive—eleven sweater vests! I’m now out of worsted weight wool entirely and working through a bunch of other stuff. I figure it’ll take me a few more months to get everything knit up and out of the house. I don’t know what I’m going to do afterwards, but it was time for a fresh start.

You know, this is probably the goal that I worry about the most, even though it’s not, like, world peace or something. I guess that’s a sign that my life is pretty good. I don’t worry about money or health or politics, I worry about something totally easy to deal with.

I did inherit a lot of yarn from our most recent yarn swap, but I also let go of a lot of stuff at the swap and even sent some of the stuff I claimed off to charity later in the week. It’s a wash overall, but I also have a new goal. I want to eventually get my yarn down to one big black box. It may take a while, but whatever… I’m not going to actually get through my stash, but I can get it down to one big box maybe sometime in the next 12-24 months.

Afghans for Afghans just announced a new campaign. They want baby blankets under 45 inches… Time to get cracking!

I’m one of those people who packs yarn to go on vacation the way a bookworm packs books. For this trip, I took a whole stack of odd balls and knit up three hats in two days and started a fourth. I feel pretty good about it. I discovered that I have a stack of finished hats where I haven’t sewn in all the trailing yarns. I don’t know when I’m going to get to that, but I need to…

I’m in between on the blankets that I’m working on. I’ve kinda gotten sick of them and have really been dragging my feet lately. I ran out of yarn on the latest one and was really worried about what I was going to do with it. Luckily someone on Ravelry had some in the same dyelot, so I have enough to finish it and I’ll probably work on that sometime this week. I have a bag of blankets sitting out in my living room. Soon I can gather them all up for the wash and drop them off at the hospital. I’m looking forward to that, but I’m still not particularly motivated.

in a slightly different manner: “Use what I have first.” Over the weekend, I went out and bought some supplies to make cards for my friends. I had a bunch of stuff already, but I wanted to make something special and have more thank you/congratulations cards on hand. I didn’t spend a lot but it feels like everything is adding up these days. When I was thinking over my weekend today, I could have just used any of the cards I had in my stationery drawer. It didn’t really matter that much. In fact, when I went through my drawer, I actually used one of the cards I’d bought a while ago. I don’t begrudge the money I spent on making those cards; I’ll need them in the future, they kept me busy for a little bit and I certainly could have done worse things with my money, but it would also be nice to have more in my savings account.

There’s something very satisfying about using up things, even silly household stuff. I’m almost at the end of a bottle of moisturizer! It’s taken me several months! Woo hoo! When I’m out shopping, I’m often more interested in getting shiny new things, but when I’m home, I’d rather be working through something than buying more. I need to remember that more often when I’m not home. I have all sorts of things sitting around waiting for me to watch them or read them or whatever. Use what I have first.

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I’ve also decided that “worrying” about my stash and chewing over what I’ll make next is actually kind of relaxing in some way. I don’t feel like I’m in a tizzy when I’m thinking about it, even if that’s how I categorize it later. It’s certainly more calming than worrying about world peace or stories from the news.

I’ve eaten through a bunch of Mission Falls 1824 cotton lately and finished of a really lovely green blanket. It’s actually big enough to be a lap blanket and since I pretty much planned the yarn instead of using what I had, it’s actually a really nice piece. I was working on the border last night and thought it’d be lovely to keep it around, but we already have stuff, no need for more… I need to finish off the edging, but it should be ready to go by the end of the week.

I also just bought more pink yarn to make up for the 16 squares I melted last weekend. It’ll be some time before I get them done, but I was happy to find more cheap yarn on ravelry. I spent $14, but I think I bought enough to finish it off.

I’m currently challenging myself to use up more of the mystery yarn that I melted a few days ago. [note to self: no more boiling water…] I have a bunch of big skeins of it and my current plan is to knit each color up in between big projects. I have six colors left, so even if I only play lip service to this idea, it’ll get me started on a blanket using them. It’s kinda demoralizing to use them, frankly. It’s a beautiful yarn, but I know it would just sit in my stash after that disaster…

A4A just finished its last appeal and I’m done with my giant stack of hats, so I’m working on baby blankets for my local hospital. I finished off a cotton baby blanket this week and have started searching around to see what’s next.

I have a pile of squares made out of skinny yarn from those blankets I made up last summer. I matched some of the pink squares up with some pinky skinny yarn that I bought recently for that purpose. While I didn’t quite have enough to finish off a realistically sized blanket, I had enough to get me going. I have a lot of Mission Falls 1824 cotton, but at 9 skeins, it wasn’t enough to really be a blanket on its own. I matched it up with some of JKD’s black yarn and then tottered off to the internet to buy more yarn for both blankets… I know I will probably be annoyed when it all shows up and I don’t have anywhere to put it, but I will have enough to finish off those two blankets without any problems. I also bought some other discontinued yarn to match up with some orangish squares that I made last year. It’s not enough to be a whole blanket, but it’ll get me started. The orange is kind of an odd color at a good price, so I jumped on it when I saw it. I was putting off buying yarn until I used up a bit more of what I had, but I didn’t have enough to finish off the first blanket, much less the second or third.

Other than the pink one I’m working on right now, I’m happy that all of these blankets will be pretty much gender neutral in kid-friendly colors but not traditional pastels. I figure they get a lot of pink and blue things and that’s not to everyone’s taste. These blankets should keep me going for the next couple of months.

With my manic hat-making, I’ve made great strides in stash reduction lately. I did buy a few skeins on sale with a gift certificate, but I’ve knit up yarn like there’s no tomorrow lately and it shows. I have a big old pile of hats, but even better, this weekend I took some time to reorganize things. I took over a new, medium sized box in the living room, but I emptied out a small box and my biggest, trunk sized box.

I decided to tackle the biggest, bulkiest yarn I had over the next few weeks in the hope that I’d free up a box for finished objects. I have to say, I’m pretty proud of myself! Starting with big yarn turned out to be a good motivator since it was pretty quick to knit up a hat on super thick needles and I quickly worked up a good sized stack of new hats. I’m now back to knitting up things on normal-sized needles, but I’ve made 17 or so hats since I finished off that last afghan. It’s always good to see my odd balls go into finished objects. I made two hats with stripes of the extra yarn from a friend’s Christmas gift and it reminded me of her…

I’ve shuffled around my yarn lately, so I’m not sure if I’ve really gotten rid of a full box of yarn, but I’ve definitely made progress. I think this is my “theme” for spring—I’m going to go through the odd balls and make as many hats as I can until I’m totally sick of them and want something else to do.