Let's Talk About Your Yarn Stash ...

Since I just recently added to my pile of "too pretty to leave on the shelf" yarn, I think it's time we address what to do with those one off skeins or sale yarn we've all accumulated. (And if you are one of the Unicorn knitters and crocheters out there that only buys for their next project ... move along. Nothing to see here! LOL)

All my "fancy" yarns in one place. Yikes!

Before we dive into the contents of the photo above, let's set the stage.

For most of us crafty types, no matter what craft we fall in love with, we start accumulating products related to that craft fairly quickly. When I started scrapbooking I bought papers and glue obviously, but I also needed a paper trimmer and an album to put my finished layouts into. And then I 'needed' pretty stickers, and letters to make titles, and tiny scissors for detail cutting, and punches so I didn't have to rely on free-handing circles and hearts. I borrowed a friends Cricut machine and cartridges so I could cut out letters for titles, and fancy embellishments to decorate my pages. This led to purchasing an electronic die cutting machine of my own that connected to my computer and worked with digital files.

You see where I'm going here?

Pretty soon my craft room needed a paper rack to hold all my scrapbooking paper, and storage bins and drawers for all the stickers, buttons, sequins, stamp sets, and die cuts I 'couldn't resist'. As it stands right now I could not buy anything (except glue) and happily scrapbook until the end of time! Yes, it's a bit of a problem.

Same thing applies to our yarn hobbies. You start with one hook or one set of knitting needles and one skein of yarn and you learn the basics. That skien might become a dishcloth or a scarf as you master beginner stitches and techniques. But then you want to try new stitches, new techniques, and new pattens. Suddenly you're wandering the yarn aisles of Micheal's squishing the balls of yarn and looking at the wall of hooks and needles wondering what you could make with it all. Since it's Micheal's and there's likely a sale and/or a coupon on your phone, you go home with something!

That my friends is the beginning of a very slippery slope!

The more yarn you squish, the more crochet and knitting accounts you follow, the more your stash grows and before long you have forgotten exactly what you bought, never mind why you bought it! (By the way, if you're following the 'typical' evolution of a yarn hoarder, you've also accumulated an obscene number of patterns. We will have to address that in another post one day.)

You may have already taken a look at your yarn stash during your WIP evaluation session last month. If so, great! Hopefully you have either had the chance to plan what you're going to do with it, or your brain has been thinking about it in the background and you can hit the ground running now.

Before I dive into what to do with all that pretty yarn you've liberated from the store, let's address the three categories it usually falls into.

1. It was on sale

This is such a tricky situation to navigate. Sales are designed to appeal to our inner hoarding tendencies. They spark a scarcity mind set and we generally buy more than we need or, let's be honest, could use. I've fallen into this trap more times than I care to admit and I'm not here to bring judgement for your actions. Just solutions.

So let's say, for example, a yarn shop was closing it's doors and everything was hugely discounted. (For all my OG yarnies, this happened when I shut the doors of Ladner Village Arts & Crafts 😔) You'd want to stock up on your favourite yarns, right? Totally reasonable! But now you've got a bin (or two) of yarn with no project in sight.

2. It was too pretty to leave behind

This is the category I fall victim to most often. (Also in this category is "but I'm supporting small/local artisans" LOL) I get it, sometimes you're at a new yarn shop or you're cruising a fibre festival and there's a skein of yarn that is just too pretty to leave on the shelf. It magically falls into your shopping bag and every now and then you take it out and admire it. Maybe you even squish it and wonder "what shall I make with you?"

The photo at the top of this post is my "too pretty to leave behind" pile. Yikes!

3. It was gifted to you

This can either be the easiest category to deal with, or the hardest, depending on the circumstances of that gift. Let's say a friend or relative knows you love to knit or crochet and they come across a stash of yarn while cleaning out their own home or the home of someone else. They drop it off at your door and now it becomes your problem to deal with. There's likely little emotional attachment on your side to this yarn so in theory it should be easy to sort it into 'keep', 'donate', and 'toss' piles. Using the strategies I laid out in the WIP analysis article, you can look at this gift logically and deal with it before it has time to become attached to you. Make sense?

• divide into type or brand

• be honest with yourself - do you even like the yarn?

• can you picture a project that you'll use the yarn for?

• be honest with yourself some more - will you actually make that project?

But what about those gifts that come because a loved one has passed away and we inherit the contents of their craft room? This is much harder and as I told a friend recently, the first thing to do it give it time. If you can. If you need to clean out their home then you may be forced to make tough decisions, but if you're able to leave it where it is, my advice is to do just that.

I lost my parents when I was a teenager and while we sold or gave away much of the contents of our home when we put the house on the market, we also packed up a lot of the personal items and put them into storage. My brother and I would visit this storage locker every now and then, mostly to grab bits and pieces of our own personal items, or to get the dishes and other kitchen items when we were setting up our first apartments. (Yes, we literally had boxes of cutlery and Tupperware!) Eventually my brother bought a home with a basement and all those boxes and trunks moved into it. It took decades for us to deal with it. And you know what, it was a relatively enjoyable process by then.

I'm not advocating that you let any inherited yarn stash sit for decades - for one, it probably will deteriorate and be unusable, especially if it's wool and not stored properly. But allowing your personal grief time to lessen will help the inevitable sorting process. A bit of distance allows our logical brain to take over and then we can follow the steps laid out above to sort and separate.

And if you need to keep some or all of their stash because it's just too painful to part with, then do it! (If you can. It's equally unhealthy to hang onto 'baggage' that doesn't fit comfortably into your current life and space.)

Finding Projects for Your Stash

Now that we've determined how the yarn entered our lives, it's time to figure out what we are going to do with it. Unless you live alone in a 10 bedroom mansion, odds are you have a finite amount of space to devote to storing your stash. Eventually you will hit max capacity and be forced to deal with it, but let's try and avoid getting into that situation, okay?

For an honest look (yes, another personal confession time) at the yarn stashed in my garage, watch this little video I filmed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naAuWjdA3K4

In the video above I've got project ideas for some of the yarn in my stash, but a lot of it is just "taking up space". The first basket I shared where I have the pattern IN the basket leads me to Tip Number 1

1. Add your pattern

Sometimes you buy a whole lot of a particular yarn because you already have a project in mind but ... life happens. (Your store shuts down and you find yourself up to your eyeballs in starting up a new business venture so your project gets put on the back burner. For example! Okay, this might only pertain to me but you get the idea.)

If this has happened to you, ask yourself:

• do you still want to make that project?

• do you still want to make it with that yarn?

If your answers are "yes" then do what I did and group the yarn in a bin, basket, drawer or box and include the pattern. Bonus points for labelling the bin/box/drawer/basket!

2. Keep a list

On my phone is a list that I started in October of last year to help me keep track of my "fancy yarns".

I wrote down the manufacturer/dyer, colour name, yarn weight, how many yards per skein, how many skeins I have, and total yardage. Plus I made a note about possible projects.

Because this note lives in my phone it's with me where ever I go and if I end up at a yarn shop or fibre festival and I see the same local dyer I can pull this up and quickly reference what I already own of theirs. That way I can either add another skein of the same yarn/colour to my stash to complete a larger project, or I can see that I already own something of theirs that I haven't used yet and move on.

This list also comes in handy for the next tip.

3. Use Ravelry to find a project/pattern

There are many places to find inspiration on the internet. Too many! A quick Google search for "crocheted t-shirt patterns" gives you something that looks like this

It can be overwhelming and non-specific.

What if I told you there is a search engine that will give you hundreds of results from real people AND allow you to be super specific in your search. If you are not familiar with Ravelry then I invite you to take a look at it now. It's free to set up an account and has more tools than this video shares, but for the sake of today's post, here are two super cool ways to find a pattern for the yarn in your stash.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTJRzYkZIXA

Clearly I should have opened my Notes app before filming this video to see that I had over 1700yds of the fingering weight yarn not 1300! But the point is still valid. You can take every yarn in your stash, plug it into the Ravelry search engine and find dozens (if not thousands) of project ideas.

Wether you search for your yarn by name to see what others have made with it, or for a project by how many yards of a yarn you have, if you want a more accurate way to find a project for the stash you're trying to control, Ravelry has it! Once you've assessed your bins of yarn, try finding a pattern this way and let me know your thoughts. I will also plug in all my special yarns and their yardage and let you know what I find. Next time!

As a final thought, I came across this on Instagram and ... well ... see for yourself.

Has your stash reached that level yet?