Thursday, December 2, 2010

My Cup Runneth Over

Last weekend, in what was obviously a fit of insanity, I decided to clean my stash room and organize my fiber and yarn stash.  Yes, you read that right: I decided to organize the entire stash

I've been just putting yarn in whatever clear storage tote it would it in and buying more totes for so long that I could no longer find anything I was looking for.  And when I did go looking for something specific, I found stuff I'd forgotten I had.  Disorganization is the only explanation for my owning 7 skeins of red, acrylic fun fur.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

I pulled out all the storage totes, boxes, bags, cardboard boxes, shopping bags, and plastic bags and started emptying them.  I devised an absolutely brilliant plan for sorting the yarn:  I'd put sweater amounts together, and then just sort yarns by weight into totes and stack them up nice and neat in the stash room.  I have 12 of those 65-quart clear storage totes, which should be plenty.  An easy, simple, foolproof plan, right?
Uh, huh, sure.

Very quickly, several things became painfully obvious in this yarn-sorting process:
  1. I have a lot of sock yarn.
  2. I have a lot of lace yarn.
  3. I have lots and lots of fingering and DK weight yarn.
  4. I really like neutral-colors of sock yarn.
  5. I also really like worsted weight yarn.
  6. Apparently, bulky weight yarn is a also a very good thing.
  7. I have a lot of blue and green sock yarn.
  8. I have more lace-weight yarn than I will ever knit in this lifetime.
  9. I have more yarns in sweater amounts than I realized.
  10. I may have a sock yarn problem.
  11. A 65-quart tote full of off-white fisherman yarn could possibly be an excessive amount.
  12. I have spun a LOT of yarn in the last 4 years.
  13. A color of yarn which I will not buy apparently does not exist.
  14. After putting the sweater amounts together, they used nearly 1/2 the totes.
  15. The weight-sorted totes are full to capacity; I had to lock the lids to keep them on.
  16. I need to buy a lot more totes.

8 comments:

  1. you are a braver woman than I. I have not done a stash sort since I moved the 42 totes into the back room. I left room in some of the totes for growth, but apparently they are full because there is yarn stacked on top of, in front of and around the existing totes.

    If I was not still laid up with a fotched lower back, I could use your inspiration as motivation to do my own stash inventory - but I can't possibly do so at this time.

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  2. Yay Tiggywinkle!! You go, girl!
    I bet that red funfur is for the red scarf project.

    White yarn is potentially any color you care to dye it. White yarn is Never a bad idea!!

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  3. Where are the pictures of this so called "stash"??

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  4. You can take the laceweight yarns and combine them in knitting for subtle color changing patterns. A Pi Shawl done that way would be beautiful.

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  5. I sorted by fiber content -- so for me, a big tote of acrylic (don't judge! It's cheap and satisfying!), another tote full of cotton and mostly-cotton, and two totes of wool, part-wool, and other misc animal-sourced fibers.

    Um. Plus the two totes of 'this needs to be frogged, it sucks,' and the three totes of 'almost finished, except for (thing)'.

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  6. hahahahahaha!!! LOVE it. I have totes and totes... And.. ps our blog backgrounds match! yay Orange! nice to meet you! see you around on Ravelry and such!

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  7. I think the plastic totes industry is primarily supported by knitters...

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  8. There's a Socks from Stash group where you kind of do what the YH did this last year. I'm going to put together at least a dozen sock kits. The 10 Shawls in 2010 is changing to (bet there's no surprise here) 11 Shawls in 2011. Just join the original group in December and it will auto-update in January when they change the name. There's even prizes. So two groups to help you knit up all your lace and sock weight yarns, or all your sock yarn if you just use that for your shawls.

    I'm with Rachel - must see pics! ;-)

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