Last night, Josh went to bed around 9:30. The cats were more than likely snuggled up with him. The dogs were knocked out on the couch. Though I was also tired, I decided to stay up for a little while. There’s just something satisfying and peaceful about being the only one awake in the house. I stayed up until about 11:00 working on a crochet project and watching one of my favorite movies that had come on (“The Martian” in case you’re wondering). It was a delightful evening.
Based on that, I decided my post today would be about yarn. We are getting close to being finished with all the final touches on our new creative space. I have space on one of the tall shelves and contemplated last night how best to utilize the available space. Something else I need to do is thin out my yarn stash. The two ideas connect because I used to store my yarn bins on those two tall shelves. I have since moved them to the closet in the room.
This closet is not a typical size. On the other side of the wall is the staircase leading up to our attic. So this is a tiny little closet underneath the stairs.
In the back of the closet is Josh’s stereo cabinet. He has one of those stereos with multiple parts that connect together. In the age of streaming, he doesn’t use it anymore. So the stereo is in the attic and the cabinet, complete with a glass door is in this closet, packed full of project bags and other tools related to knitting/crocheting. Everything else in here is bins. A couple years ago, during the summer when I was between jobs, I cataloged every skein of yarn I have. I made a note on the Ravelry stash page about which bin the yarn was in. All of the bins have a letter on the outside. So if I am looking for a particular skein of yarn, I first go to Ravelry and find it on the stash page, and then look for which bin it’s in.
This is the main stash page:
And this is the stash page for one stash entry:
Ravelry tells me I have 297 stash entries. What that doesn’t count is how many skeins of each yarn I have. For example, the yarn above is one stash entry. It counts as 1 toward the 297. However, if I had 4 skeins of that color stashed, it would say 4 skeins next to the word ‘stashed’ and it would have the total number of yards of 4 skeins, but my stash entry would still only be 297. It still only counts as one entry. So basically, I have more yarn than my stash page on Ravelry says I do. I’m going to estimate the number is closer to 6 or 700. We call that SABLE—Stash Acquisition Beyond Life Expectancy. Basically, I have more yarn than I can use in my lifetime. And why do I have that much?
The Dowager says it’s none of your business!
In all honesty, I have it because it was pretty and/or I have an idea of something I’d like to make with it and/or it was on sale and/or it was really pretty. Or it was soft. I could write a whole post about my ball of quiviut. It cost about $80 for a tiny little ball of it and Josh got it for me for Christmas because it was a knitting bucket list item. I just wanted to touch it.
Having revealed that I have a slight obsession with yarn, I must also now confess that I’m thinking of going through the yarn and destashing some of it. I have so much that it’s hard to even find the bin I’m looking for. Those bins go all the way to the back of the closet.
Of course, this makes me realize that I have no room to tease my husband about all the fishing gear he has accumulated since starting it as a hobby. He doesn’t have a website where he documents all the lures, reels, and rods that he has like I do with my yarn. I guess we’re both similar in that when we get into a hobby, we go hard! That’s not a bad thing. Though I do get conflicted sometimes because I want to spend more time knitting, but I also have books I want to read, and a book I’d like to finish writing. The beauty of this “problem” is that there’s no deadline. It will all get done and it’ll get done as I feel like it. Last night, I felt like crocheting. When our creative space is completely finished, I will probably feel like writing a lot more. I’m looking forward to all of it.
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