Stash Busting - This is Why...

In my last post I mentioned that I am not currently buying yarn until I have used up a significant amount of the yarn in my stash.  

Stash is what American knitters (or maybe English speaking knitters...)  use to denote the yarn they have collected/hoarded over the years. Stash busting is the effort to use/give away some of the yarn to make the stash smaller. For some of us (and you know who you are!) the stash is a problem of epic proportions - "Honey, I moved the plates from the kitchen cupbord to make space for my insert name of yarn here". For others it is a source of pride and personal joy.

Where do I fall in? Well... Somewhere in between. If I had space, It would not be a problem, but my Fuzzband and I live in a one bedroom apartment with very little storage space, and he has pretty bulky projects too (building speakers, hockey, fly tying...) When I used to work at Yarn on Whitney occasionally (summer of 2009) the owner was kind enough to extend the staff discount to me, and eventually when the store merged with the mother-store in Westville, I also got the amazing staff discount. So, I bought a TON of yarn, thinking I could now work with this stash and not buy yarn for a while. More or less true. In fact, now that I think of it - more true! 

The rule is: I only buy yarn if I need it to finish a project, the bulk of which is knit with stash yarn; or if somebody buys me the yarn to make something for them. For example, I plan to make another set of wedding gifts, and I will do the work and Fuzzband will buy the yarn. This kind of yarn does not get bought and lie around the flat. Hopefully. Or so I tell myself. So far, so good.

This is a nice and tame photo of the bulk of my stash. I took it out over the Holidays to make an inventory and enter some in to my stash on Ravelry. It looks pretty controlled and neat, no? When not in use it lives in three large bright orange buckets from Home Depot, ziplock bags in an amazingly fabulous and tacky Catholic Kitsch (tm) bag in the back of my closet. Odds and ends live in a zipper equipped bag one of our duvets came in.The hope is that these precautions will keep moths away....


However, the second photo here is a more accurate photograph - in context of the apartment. In this photo you can see the yarn, the tub, and 1/6 of our home.

My current challenge is to find items to knit with the amazing amount of lace weight fuzzy yarn I have. I have some ideas, and that is always good. And of course one idea is sometimes superseded by another, and another, and another ad infinitum...

I spent some time yesterday going through one of my Home Depot tubs and photographing the yarn so I have a visual attached to my stash list on Ravelry - planning purposes, you know. I got most of it up there! Over the next month I hope to have the other two tubs done as well. In the end I should have my stash on Ravelry, neatly organized, and easy to refer to when I take the time to think about stash busting. I have several yarns up there I have no photographs for, but this process should take care of that as well.

Are you a Raveller? Want to spy on me? You can find me under "maweisse" on Ravelry, but I think you have to be logged in for that link to work...