Stash is a topic of continual fascination to knitters. Lime and Violet are constantly both increasing their stashes and feeling guilty about it. (And boy, do I love them for it.) Lixie recently devoted much of an episode of her podcast to the stash issue. She’s even developed an Excel program for calculating your stash in miles, and coming up with approximately how long it will take you to knit it all up. There are a number of knitalongs for folks who need yarn diets and pledge to knit only from their stashes - such as this one, this one, and that one. Lolly recently shared her stash stories, and Kelly catalogued her enviably color-coordinated stash. There’s much discussion in the blogosphere and in knitting groups about how one can control the size of one’s stash, and I wanted to get down some thoughts about that.

First of all, I don’t really have much of a stash. This makes me far less interesting than Lime and Violet, naturally. Here’s the whole thing:

stash.jpg

Item by item, I’ve got:

  • 1 skein Hipknits cashmere - for the Retro Rib socks from IK.
  • 2 skeins Koigu - for the Embossed Leaves socks from IK.
  • 2 skeins Louet Gems Pearl - for Cookie A’s Twisted Flower socks.
  • 2 balls Rowan Cotton Glace - for a self-designed bag.
  • 5 skeins Louet Gems Opal - for the Katharine Hepburn cardi from Lace Style
  • 6 balls Elsebeth Lavold Hempathy - for the Josephine top from the current IK
  • 7 balls Elsebeth Lavold Cotton Patine - for the Basalt tank from Knitting Nature
  • 8 skeins Knit Picks Shine Sport - for the Cap sleeve top from DB Pure Silk

Stats: 33 skeins of yarn, 3 pairs of socks, 3 summer tops, 1 cardigan, 1 bag. And when all of this is plugged into Lixie’s Stashimator, you get the following: 3.5 miles of yarn, which will take approximately 2.8 months to knit. So theoretically, by the end of the summer, I will be completely out of yarn.

But we all know it won’t happen that way. At least one of the projects listed above will get the axe. That’s just inevitable - I just axed the Picovoli I was working on, for instance, frogged it, and reassigned the yarn (the Cotton Patine) to a different project. I might return or get rid of some of my yarn, too. And it’s very, very likely that I’ll acquire more yarn before I knit the rest of it up. I’m going to be knitting a sweater for my mother for Christmas, for example, and I want to get the yarn and knit up a swatch for her to see when she visits in July. I’m also thinking about designing some socks, and I will have to get yarn for those. You see how it goes…

But I have certain rules that will keep my stash from getting out of control:

  • Size restrictions: if it can’t fit in my cabinet (pictured above) I can’t buy it. This is the most effective way I’ve found for controlling the stash monster, even more effective than money guilt.
  • Continual pruning: if yarn has been in my stash for a long time (a year or more) with no project in sight, I either find a project to knit with it right away or get rid of it. I sell it on eBay, on the blog, or I donate it to Arts and Scraps, which is where I donate all my leftover crafting supplies. It’s a good cause, and they always send a really nice note of thanks for every package that I send.
  • No unassigned yarn: I’ve broken myself of the habit of buying yarn without a specific project in mind. Even with sock yarn (which I know doesn’t officially count for a lot of yarn diets), I make myself come up with a pattern that I truly want to knit, and that I think I will realistically wear.

So those are my thoughts on stash control. What continues to interest me is why so many of us acquire yarn so ardently, and why we seemingly can’t control it. I think some of it has to do with the materialism and commercialism of our culture, which is difficult to escape or resist. But I think that there’s another, more positive, reason, and it reminds me of a passage from Forster’s Howards End, about how Leonard Bast is always in “pursuit of beauty.” Knitters pursue beauty, too - and when we buy yarn, knit with it, wear our creations, and give them to others, we’re reveling in the beautiful and the unique. Once you get a taste of that, it’s hard to stop.