Stash Hiding Expedition
Honestly, I am not going to knit up all the yarn I have in a week or even a month. My stash hasn't reached "my own yarn store" status yet but I have crazy amounts of yarn. I should own stock in Blue Sky Alpacas and Lorna's Laces. I have pairs and pairs worth of sock yarn - good stuff. I have a british ton of Wool of the Andes for making toys (and somewhere in there is a pair or two of wristwarmers).
I had company coming - an old roomie who needed a place to stay for a few days - and this made me view my apartment with a critical eye. I have a big apartment. A big, nice apartment with huge windows and crown molding and a nice fireplace (but a tiny kitchen). But when one of the major design elements in this big apartment is Yarn, *and* you have company coming, it's probably better to hide some of that yarn away.
So I did - I bought some Ziploc XL bags and one - ONE - of those monsters is holding the Wool of the Andes under my end table. Another is about half-full of wool-acrylic mix, ranging from crappy and sneezy (Encore Worsted) to barely tolerable (Wool-Ease). (I haven't been able to get my family and friends to shed their horror of hand-washing yet.) This means my copper tub for yarn is now full, instead of overflowing. It means I don't look like a crazy yarn lady anymore.
I've been reading "The Secret Life of a Knitter" which I got for Christmas, and in which she talks all about hiding stash all over the house. If I did this, I'd never find it again. Ever. I have a closet full of clothes I don't wear anymore that I can't bear to part with. Boxes of junk for my portfolio. Practically every computer box I have ever walked in the house with. Putting yarn in there too is just a bad idea.
She also talks about how there are kinds of works in progress - ones you'll never finish because the project was wrong, the yarn was wrong, or the knitter was wrong were the most interesting to me. I have a lot of this. Garnstudio silk tweed comes to mind. Lovely yarn, bought for a lace project and absolute hell to knit with. (Scratchy.) I should have waited that day and gone to the OTHER yarn store for the Elsebeth Lavold I wanted. Things like that mean I have tons of yarn I'll never use, that is too skimpy a quantity to trade, and too nice to give away.
And I really love the colour of that yarn, a deep bricky red, so maybe I'll find something else for it. And since we all know the word "maybe" is the one that dooms knitters to a lifetime of unused stash that must be held on to, then I am doomed.
So the stash is hidden and I'm sitting here with a cup of green tea, ready to knit the toe of my prize sock. I hope blocking radically changes this yarn, because I still don't like how it knits up. I'm going to block after I finish this one, so if it stinks I can go buy some other sock yarn (since I don't have any solids) and only be half a project behind.
More later.
I had company coming - an old roomie who needed a place to stay for a few days - and this made me view my apartment with a critical eye. I have a big apartment. A big, nice apartment with huge windows and crown molding and a nice fireplace (but a tiny kitchen). But when one of the major design elements in this big apartment is Yarn, *and* you have company coming, it's probably better to hide some of that yarn away.
So I did - I bought some Ziploc XL bags and one - ONE - of those monsters is holding the Wool of the Andes under my end table. Another is about half-full of wool-acrylic mix, ranging from crappy and sneezy (Encore Worsted) to barely tolerable (Wool-Ease). (I haven't been able to get my family and friends to shed their horror of hand-washing yet.) This means my copper tub for yarn is now full, instead of overflowing. It means I don't look like a crazy yarn lady anymore.
I've been reading "The Secret Life of a Knitter" which I got for Christmas, and in which she talks all about hiding stash all over the house. If I did this, I'd never find it again. Ever. I have a closet full of clothes I don't wear anymore that I can't bear to part with. Boxes of junk for my portfolio. Practically every computer box I have ever walked in the house with. Putting yarn in there too is just a bad idea.
She also talks about how there are kinds of works in progress - ones you'll never finish because the project was wrong, the yarn was wrong, or the knitter was wrong were the most interesting to me. I have a lot of this. Garnstudio silk tweed comes to mind. Lovely yarn, bought for a lace project and absolute hell to knit with. (Scratchy.) I should have waited that day and gone to the OTHER yarn store for the Elsebeth Lavold I wanted. Things like that mean I have tons of yarn I'll never use, that is too skimpy a quantity to trade, and too nice to give away.
And I really love the colour of that yarn, a deep bricky red, so maybe I'll find something else for it. And since we all know the word "maybe" is the one that dooms knitters to a lifetime of unused stash that must be held on to, then I am doomed.
So the stash is hidden and I'm sitting here with a cup of green tea, ready to knit the toe of my prize sock. I hope blocking radically changes this yarn, because I still don't like how it knits up. I'm going to block after I finish this one, so if it stinks I can go buy some other sock yarn (since I don't have any solids) and only be half a project behind.
More later.
posted by Jen at 9:07 AM
3 Comments:
Heh - I could so relate as I was reading this post! Two things keep my little condo from looking like the lair of a crazy yarn lady. The first is the cat - can't leave yarn lying uncontained.
The second is my gloriously large bedroom closet, which holds a shocking number of Sterilite plastic tubs. Things might be getting out of hand, however, since I recently had to tuck one of those tubs away in the pantry... Bad sign when there's too much yarn to be contained in the bedroom...
Think ebay for unwanted yarn.
Well don't go in my garage..(no cars in there)(everything is packaged up yarn & fabric) Looks like I could start a fiber store!
Yikes!
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