August seems to be the time of my personal annual stash review. My fall festival season kicks off with my local yarn store’s anniversary sale and ends with Rhinebeck if I’m able to go. This typically meant I would go through all of my WIPs (works in progress), and my yarn stash to take inventory. I’d go through my Ravelry, adding yarn that I had purchased but never logged, and removed anything that had been knit up or donated. This typically was a slightly overwhelming process but hadn’t been thanks to the pandemic since I was mostly gathering from online sources for very specific projects. I was going to say “no impulse purchases for me” but let’s be real. They were just slightly more reeled in this way.
Last year was my first festival in two years, so to say I went hard is a bit of an understatement. That mixed with a few life changes, I hadn’t had as much knitting time, so the area dedicated to my yarn was full, and overflowing into the main areas of our house.
This year, I’m pregnant. So I’m extra overwhelmed by my stash, especially because it’s been growing fairly quickly for all of the baby’s makes I’m planning. And on top of all of that, we are going to start renovating the house in a few weeks, so the space that my crafting can take up will be significantly reduced for quite a while.
I’d love to do some sort of goal a la “Knitting Natty” over on youtube (link to her playlist)- but with how busy our fall will be and baby being due at the end of January I know I’ll have too much on my plate to truly keep track of what comes in and out of my stash and be able accurately detail all the changes with you. So with our first on her way, I’m not going to make any promises.
I also want to have the disclaimer that this is what feels good for me at this time in my life. I’ve previously dreamt of having the stash I have now and more, but when it comes down to it I do have other hobbies that I want to spend more time on. A stash reduction is what needs to happen for me and my brain at this moment.
Starting Point
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been working on organizing my yarn in a new-to-me app called Notion. It’s been a great way to get my stuff off the internet, and utilize an app that syncs between my devices, where I can review my stash in multiple types of formats! Plus I can still link together stash with my projects within the app similar to a certain website.
I’m going to call myself out and say that these numbers are a little fudged. My entry or line count started out higher, but since I started writing this post I’ve done a big destash, pulling out items I’d like to sell, and have had very good luck in some Facebook groups dedicated to selling!! But I will say this is a true representation of where my stash sits today. It sort of stinks that I didn’t include skein count. I do like that I have it set up as yardage or per project basis though! I like to know how many projects I have planned with my stash and not focus on the number of skeins I have. Which I mean… I still get a glimpse of that here and it’s a lot. 😅
Goals
So I know I kicked this off by mentioning I’m pregnant so I know I don’t want to have any sort of major milestones for the upcoming year.
But – I do still want to have some “mini” goals to try to work on this Fall. I’m not going to do anything extreme like no yarn acquisitions for “x” amount of time, nor that I will force myself to knit from stash because I don’t want to kill my creativity. Regardless, something has to be done with this monstrosity of a stash. (Personal opinion, I’m overwhelmed!!)
- The first plan of attack is to knit up my existing WIPS – not all of them all at once, that would be wild. But to get down the things that really have timelines. I’m currently working on a baby blanket (can backlink this later) in a thick yarn to make it a quick knit. Additionally, I have two sweaters I’m working on for Rhinebeck. Or we could just say they are for the cold season in general that will work even as the preggo bump grows. The Rhinebeck sweater has a hard due date, and I’d like to get it off the needles as fast as possible.
- My second plan of attack that’s happening co-currently is destashing any yarns that aren’t filling my cup. I’ve started posting to a few destash Facebook groups and have gotten some traction, and if I end up not being able to sell it all in a timely matter I’ll start thinking of other ways to destash like giveaways or finding spots to donate the yarn to.
- Next, this really has nothing to do with stash but more so my overwhelm, but I cleaned up and out all of my projects that were still WIPs. One of them I hadn’t touched in years. Another was a short sleeve sweater where the short sleeves didn’t fit well, so I ripped out the sleeves to re-knit them long because I’d be more likely to use it, and now it doesn’t even fit altogether. To be determined what happens with that guy. And outside of a few small projects that didn’t make it very far, I also have a sweater for a young cousin who has outgrown the sweater before I could complete it. This was my second time trying to knit him something before he grew out of it so I’m really pouting at myself for not just finishing the sleeves and hood and getting it to him last fall. With all of that being said, I am currently sitting at 10 active WIPs, which is usually my sweet spot. It sounds like a lot of projects, and I would like to get it into single digits but I’m still enjoying everything else on the needles so I won’t go wild frogging anything else!
- Lastly, the amount of single skeins of sock yarn I own is ridiculous. Mostly because I detest hand-knitting socks! I’m a one-and-done sort of knitter, so the idea of having to make two of something is wild to me. I have done it before, but it’s not my first option. Back in the days of commuting, I did carry around a sock in progress and usually kept one in my car just in case there were those days I end up in stand-still traffic. But since the pandemic started, I haven’t had a need for a purse sock. Thankfully, we have a dear friend with a 3D printer who’s working on building me a circular sock knitting machine in “secret.” Little does he know, my husband can’t keep a secret for shit, but he’s hoping to be complete by the holidays! That will help drastically reduce the size of my stash and up my hand-knit sock drawer!!
Beyond that, it really is just finding time to knit, especially on things that I’m currently in love with. Digging out my yarn has been super eye-opening, especially when the tags still have the price I paid on them.
What’s Next
This is where I’m going to be super loosey-goosey on my plans. We’re about to start some major renovations on our house, so my crafts will need to be secluded to my actual office. Outside of destashing and knitting as quickly as possible, are there any other tips you have to help me feel a little less overwhelmed by it all?? Let me know in the comments!
