Hoard Down

Somewhere along the way of building my stash something happened.  Certain skeins became more special than others and to even think about knitting with one of the special skeins the most perfect pattern had to be chosen.  It wasn't such a bad thing when it was just a few skeins of a really nice colorway or a particularly expensive or hard to come by type of yarn.  I think anyone with a stash has a few of those extra special yarns that will take a little more planning or a special occasion to knit up.

Somewhere along the way of building the stash and adding to the special "top shelf" stash, if you will.  More and more skeins reached this status and sometimes an entire yarn line.  That is just crazypants!  I am comfortable enough with my stash that I can go buy something with a purpose in mind or simply because I like the way it looks or feels.  I have a stash so that I will have yarn to work with when inspiration strikes and to facilitate the inspiration.  For more and more of my stash to have this unsaid "off limits" status was something that actually caught me by surprise.  I knew I was doing it.  I knew I had quite a few skeins that when I thought of what to use for a project, said skeins would pass through my brain and be immediately dismissed.  What caught me off guard was just how much of the stash had gotten to this point and how it had happened without me being conscious of it.

How did I figure it out?  Well, this is another paragraph that will surely have some of you shaking your head at the level of nuttiness I have achieved.  I was planning to start some socks.  This was a couple months ago.  I knew what pattern I wanted to use and what yarn and colorway, but it was one of the special ones.  I still wanted to use it though, so what do I do?  I buy a replacement skein for my stash before I allow myself to knit the one I have on hand.  In no universe is this sane.  In no universe is this what stash building is for.  A knitter's stash is ultimately supposed to be there to be used, someday, in some way.  Replacing a skein, with the exact same thing, as soon as you decide to use it?  Yes, that is nuts.  If everyone did that, every single time, one's stash would just get bigger and bigger.

So you might be thinking, okay so you realized it was nuts, so you just started using stuff and not replacing it then, right?  Ha!  That would be the sane thing to do, but we have already stated that I am nutty, remember?  So yeah, A tiny hint of realization hit me with those socks a couple months ago, but full on awareness did not strike until about a week ago.  So yeah.  I started those socks, with my "back- up skein" tucked safely away in my stash in case some super duper perfect pattern fell into my lap and that yarn was THE ONE and by then the dyer wasn't a dyer anymore or the base had been discontinued or some other horrible fate had befallen said yarn. 

Then, I actually had a break through in my stash building and knitting career.  I ordered a beautiful self striping skein of yarn, it came in the mail and I wound it and cast on before I even had time to enter it into my stash page on Ravelry!  It was actually when I was posting about this pair of socks:

That it occurred to me what a breakthrough that was.  It felt good to have knit the socks with yarn that was really only destined for the stash when I bought it.  I did not have the irrational desire to order a replacement skein.  It felt good, so good in fact that I did the same thing a couple weeks later:

Ordered the yarn with the idea of Halloween socks, got it in the mail, knit the socks.  This made me feel so great that I took a cold hard look at what I had been up to.  This strange degree of stash hoarding that I was completely unaware of.  Which brings us to last week.

Last week I decided that I needed to get off my butt and knit hats for the husband and the kiddos.  Something that I have been telling myself I would do for maybe two years now and so far the only recipient of a hat has been my Dad.  Well, that is fine, he goes outdoors more often than we do and we do live in Florida after all.  The things is we have had some actual cool weather and I have the yarn!  Do I ever!  So, I set out to use some of my "nice" or "special" yarn for these hats.  Of course it would be so easy to talk myself into using a less expensive yarn because the kids grow fast, they get dirty, they lose things.  Where would I be though if I continued to think that way?  In the loony bin?  A really wooly loony bin?

So I used the nice yarn:

How rewarding!  Not only was it a pleasure to knit, the colors were beyond beautiful, the fiber amazing, the recipients were in hog heaven.  Plus it just felt good to have made a breakthrough like that.  I even was able to stash down another skein that I bought and the when it came in the mail the color wasn't quite right for the project and now have another yarn I know I like using:

Which brings us to today.  It has been incredibly liberating to not have a stigma attached to so much of my stash.  I know that there is more yarn out there that I will buy and love.  Not every skein has to be anymore special than the project I decide to use it for, even if I decide on a whim.

Like at 4 am when I decided I wanted to knit the Mama Vertebrae and that I could use yarn I already had in my stash.

Ravelry tells me I stashed this in the Summer of 2011 and that what I planned to use it for was the Abalone cardigan.  Well, it is high time I use it and the pattern I am using it actually quite similar to the original intent, pretty cool, huh?  So hopefully I will have a sweater that I can wear in the next month or two, and my stash will be a little lighter.