Saturday, April 01, 2006

Voila...La Stash..ou peut-etre...La Cachette de Chelle?

Ok, a brief preamble.

First of all, if you are my husband and you want to avoid the mess and expense of an ugly divorce, hit the back button on the browser immediately and clear the cache. For that matter, if you are a non-knitter...refer to the above instructions directed towards my husband.

I've never had all my stash in one location before and I admit, it was a bit frightening.

(Larger Picture here)

I'm not sure how it got like this, I've been working hard all year to wear down my stash into a more manageable amount. (Say, no more than two or three times what I could reasonably expect to knit up in the course of my lifetime. Implicit in this calculation is the assumption that I, like both my grandmothers will live into my nineties.)

It's not as unorganized as it looks. Beginning from the top step is my collection of cottons, mostly mercerized...flowing down into cotton blends. Then there are a couple steps worth of merino wool, and a Noro and sock yarn step. That flows into the random wools and other feltables. Fluffies are next, Snowflake, fun furs and mohairs. Next is the summer stuff, excluding the aforementioned cottons, notice all the Easter Egg colours! At the foot of the stairs is a spill of chunky acrylic stuff...everything from Sirdar Denim Chunky and Kool Kidz to a heap of multi-hued Lion Boucle (stolen from Walmart at a buck a ball!)

Some good came from this humiliation. I was able to repackage everything into zippable plastic bags and store it according to fibre content.

Eighteen months ago, when I photographed my stash piece-meal (September 12, 2004 entry) I entered it all into a neat and tidy excel spreadsheet so that I wouldn't have to root through a half dozen Rubbermaid totes to figure out if I had 3 or 4 balls of the salmon mercerized cotton. Unfortunately, this allowed me to easily calculate the number of balls of yarn I had on hand. Four hundred and eighty six (486).

I've been working really had since then to wear this number down a bit.

I "donated" 75 small balls of feltable yarn to my lunchtime knitters.



I've been knitting from stash... a lot!

Well, all these efforts have paid off and I've brought the total number of skeins to...(drumroll) 507! (cough, not including single skeins, the unfeltable balls of yarn purchased for felting a couple years ago, odds and ends, etc...so probably another 35 balls ...cough)

Ok, maybe I could have exercised a bit more restraint with respect to the "acquisition" half of the

"current stash minus yarn used in projects plus LIMITED yarn purchases equals reduced stash"equation.

Oh well, at least Zibobbo will have good chuckle.

26 Comments:

At 1:11 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oh WOW! I too, was wondering how you took the picture, then thought about all the yarn in the pic. LOL!

I'm afraid to go see how much I actually have, might not be good for my boyfriend to know either! You are very courageous! LOL! ;)

 
At 8:41 PM, Blogger Haley said...

i think it's actually looking pretty good! you've pared it down a lot. :-)

 
At 11:07 PM, Blogger Unknown said...

Hold up -- you distracted me for a bit by that tres ample stash, but how did you warp ahead to April 1st? Is this your April Fool's Day come early?

 
At 12:02 AM, Blogger Chelle said...

Whoops! Caught me...Gilly was home sick today and while she was napping on the couch, I had a couple minutes to post Saturday's entry. I've got a full house tomorrow (PA day at school) and Saturday, so I posted a bit early!

About how I got up there...well, let's just say that I'd be pretty hopping mad at any of my kids for trying this stunt. The nifty black blob with the caption in the lower right hand corner is covering up my unsightly size 9 foot, clinging talon-style to the railing. If I'd been wearing fresh toenail polish, I might have left it in the picture!

 
At 5:15 PM, Blogger Samantha said...

I am *so* showing this to my hubby. Maybe then he will stop telling me "you don't need any more yarn" ... LOL

Great stash, Chelle! :)

 
At 12:35 PM, Blogger Zonda said...

I love your yarn staircase! Nice job!

 
At 12:38 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

What a fab way to show *all* the yarn. When you've got a good sized stash, it hard to show it all at once!

I added my stash in a spreadsheet in Jan...and it increased since then. Oh my.

 
At 1:22 PM, Blogger Elizabeth said...

Wonderful photo!

But I'm thinkin' ...
Didn't your mother ever tell you not to leave your toys on the stairs!?! Someone could trip...

 
At 2:39 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

!! oh what a fantastic shot! very nice. I didn't count, not really good with math stuff that requires one to do more than take their shoes off ;)

Thanks for playing :)

 
At 2:41 PM, Blogger Penny Karma, aka the F-Bomb Mom said...

Wow.

Wow.

Oh my God.

Wow.

 
At 2:46 PM, Blogger turtlegirl76 said...

That is the most impressive display I've seen yet. So, so cool.

 
At 3:20 PM, Blogger thomasina said...

Gorgeous fiber shot. Wow.

 
At 3:53 PM, Blogger aija said...

Very, very cool stash shot. Thanks for the ingeniuty in showing off! :)

 
At 4:02 PM, Blogger Bezzie said...

Wow. What more can I say? Plus I love that staircase (with or without yarn!)

 
At 5:02 PM, Blogger Unknown said...

The cascading effect of all that yarn was quite dramatic - nicely done! I love your stash - looks really good. I didn't count the number of skeins I have - you are so much braver than I!

Thanks for flashing!

 
At 6:47 PM, Blogger jpknits said...

Now that's a grand staircase! Moreover, I'm impressed: you COUNTED your stash.
:)

 
At 6:57 PM, Blogger sheep#100 said...

Can I shop at your stash?

My Stash Flash

 
At 1:07 PM, Blogger Rhonda said...

I can't believe you actually counted all of those balls of yarn. Impressive!!

 
At 3:59 PM, Blogger sleepycat said...

Beautiful picture! Thanks for sharing all this lovely fibery goodness!

 
At 6:26 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

*speechless*

except...now I know where to send my BF when he says I have too much yarn. He has no. idea.

 
At 3:14 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Heeheehee. Love the stash! And the attempt at paring down the stash. Somehow, as restrained as we might think we're being, the input always manages to be bigger than the output.

 
At 9:49 AM, Blogger Mary, Mary... said...

I keep hearing 'Here Comes the Bride' in my head. I refuse to count #skeins in my stash--you are very brave. great flash!

 
At 5:39 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I LOVE how to took the picture of your yarn on the stairs. It makes your yarn look that much cooler! ^-^v

 
At 1:44 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Wow, is right!

you could almost open up your own store.

did you forget that you had all these or are you like me when you see yarn and get all excited!

kath

 
At 2:29 PM, Blogger Yvette said...

What a fun picture. Despite your protests, I can tell you had a blast arranging and photographing. Just the kind of time-waster we yarn afflicted love.
Bravo!

 
At 5:21 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Re: The "Hobo Bag" and saying it was not difficult to do, etc. is maybe due to yours not being done to Stitch Diva's instructions. Look at their picture of the bag; yours doesn't look the same at all. It looks like you didn't do the short rows for the sides, to make it cinch up. (Which makes it pooch up to hold more stuff.) Plus theirs does not have another band of stitching besides the one going down from the strap where the striping connects. I'm having a horrible time getting the stitching exact, to their instructions, even with the tutorials. It's a VERY hard pattern to discipher, and I'm a licensed instructor!

 

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