Saturday, February 2, 2008

From little things big things grow

Last night I was adding yarn to my Ravelry stash and I came to a heart-palpitating, jaw-numbing, brain-exploding realisation.

I have too much yarn.

Now before you all curse me, I should state that I think I'm pretty lucky I have my own space in the form of a sewing room. A sewing room for sewing and quilting and all the things I used to do before I was a serious crocheter. A place where I could store my fabric stash and my batting stash and my thread stash and my collection of sewing machines.


The thing is that there ain't much room for yarn stash in my sewing room. It has taken over any spare space in the sewing room, as well as the floor, and both the spare bed and the closet in the room next door. I honestly don't have much stash - probably not as much as some. But I've only been stash building since April 2007 and I couldn't see any end to the buying in sight.


So as of today, I have put myself on a yarn diet. A strict yarn diet. With rules.

1. I will not buy any more yarn until June 30, 2008. This includes layby.
2. I will crochet only from the stash until June 30, 2008.
3. I will take Ravelry a bit more seriously and start queuing projects with that stash in mind.
4. I will sort out what and where my stash is and label the bags with the project I'm planning.
5. I will document all the stash on my blog and on Ravelry .
6. I will not reward a reduction in stash with a "special purchase" of yarn.
7. Any $2 sale at Cassidy's, or indeed any sale anywhere, is off limits.
8. Sock yarn is stash.
9. I will crochet more charity hats from the stash. I won't be buying pretty wool and saying "oh, this will be a nice charity hat". I've already said that before and I've only made 2 hats so far.

And because I haven't included a photo of anything stash or crochet related in this post, and because it's almost dinner time, here's a photo of patate al pomodoro, otherwise known as potatoes cooked with tomato. It was dead easy to make, very tasty, and kept the two of us in side dishes and lunches for about 3 days.

Patate al pomodoro

(George, it's on page 207 of "Twelve", in case you want to cook this for the Germans.)

I'll be back with more progress on the crocus scarf and some results of getting into the stash sometime soon.

6 comments:

  1. Oh, that's serious Mick. Very serious. And sock yarn IS stash? Holy moly.

    I support you in this move. I really do.

    Those potatoes look fabulous. What's Twelve? Is this a book I ought to have?

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  2. Good on you - you've seen the reality, and the reality is too much yarn for you at this time, and are doing something about it - best of luck!

    I'm knitting from my stash exclusively too, for financial reasons ... I didn't even set foot inside Cassidy's, and missed all the sale yarn :/ But it's just as well.

    Yummy potatoes! Looks delish :)

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  3. That's a noble resolution - I think I should do the same.

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  4. Gawd, I think we need to set up a Cassidys sale support group. Next time they have a sale (or if one of us gets tempted to return to the current one) we should have an emergency SnB meeting. Possibly with stash swapping ops so we at least feel like we got something new...

    ;-)

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  5. hee hee. can't wait to see all your stash! You can do it, you can you can!

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  6. Michelle, Sorry to blab on, but you will LOVE the concert - it was just so so so good.One of the very best I have been to. Have a great time and let me know all about it.

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