Stash diving

This weekend I did not work but spent the time at home, catching up on chores and trying to find time to relax. I say trying, because I wasn't very successful on the relaxing front and what's more I don't seem to have been very productive either!

Saturday, I decided to sort through my yarn stash.

I've finally managed to get hold of some resealable plastic bags and with moth season soon to be upon us I wanted to get as much of my yarn bagged up as possible. Sadly, I can't bag my fabric stash (which also comprises a whole lot of wool) as well as they do not make big enough plastic bags, so I think I'm going to need storage tubs, but that is a problem for another day.

Compared with some people I know, I don't have a particularly big yarn stash and when I hauled it all out, the whole thing sat comfortably on one half of a sofa. I deliberately searched around, finding the elderly balls of yarn that I purchased nearly two years ago back when I started getting interested in crochet again, adding the resulting mix to the pile.

Once I'd grouped similar balls and dyelots, I took some photographs of the elderly yarn and added it to Ravelry. Not because I felt the need to increase my stash list, but because these elderly balls of wool (which are not really that elderly) have been forgotten. They've been sitting behind my sofa, not gathering dust because I keep them in the plastic bags they were sold in, but never seeing the light of day and never being thought of. This means they are unlikely to be ever knitted or crocheted into anything. This is a waste of decent yarn and therefore bad.

I have similar problems with fabric and habberdashery... But again I'm not going there. One thing at a time.

Most of these formerly forgotten balls of yarn are sale yarn or discontinued, bought in small quantities, a ball of this, two balls of that... and intended to be played with, rather than to make anything specific. As such, I wasn't very consistant in my approach and my more experienced self is still puzzling over what exactly to do with them. But at least I know they exist now and having added them to my Ravelry database, I may even remember them over the coming months as I look for 'small' projects to do while I tackle my next intended 'real' project which will be a lace shawl.

I'm still not done. I ran out of time, energy and plastic bags, but even those yarns I didn't get to bag up have been moved to a more prominent place in the pile and I've started the process of thinking about simple projects for them. Bed socks for example... They're knitted at a looser guage, so in theory are faster, make good Christmas gifts and would satisfy my need to knit socks (I hope).

One thing I can say having gone through the stash, my intake of new yarns has slowed considerably since that original buying frenzy two years ago. Yarn I buy tends to be with specific types of project in mind, rather than randomly selected. My fabric habbit went a similar way, with the original frantic buying of practically anything vaguely woven, giving way to carefully selected lengths. There are always exceptions of course, the odd skein which I fall for or a pretty piece of fabric which I declare would make an excellent frock coat (which I admit may never get made), but I do try to be sensible...

Honest!