Shaking the Pot

Mix a bunch of marbles or beads of different sizes in a container. Shake it well, and you'll find that they tend to sort themselves by size - the smaller ones sift down to the bottom, with layers of gradually larger beads as you get to the top.

That's sort of what I did with my yarn stash yesterday. I gathered it all in one place, gave it a good shaking, and wound up with the different types sorting into different bins. It was the first time in 20 years (and over a dozen moves) that I had done such a thing with my yarn, and it was high time!

Folkcat's Stash - the Re-Mix

The first job was pulling it all out from its hiding places. There was yarn in my bedroom closet and under the bed; yarn in bags in a corner behind my chair; yarn in two laundry baskets sitting in the living room; yarn and some knitted swatches and an incomplete sweater in a tote under the bed (the sweater parts were finished at least 3 or 4 years ago); a queen-size blanket that I knitted, that is complete except for weaving in ends (I finished this at least two years ago); and several other assorted drawers, crates, and baskets that contained still more...you guessed, yarn.

The photo shows it all spread out in my studio/living room, partially sorted into coherent categories by type. One thing I figured out - I have far more standard acrylic worsted than I thought. I probably shouldn't be surprised, it was the staple of my knitting for decades. I should figure out some stash-busting projects to use it up.

I also have a lot of oddities - several partial balls of mohair, a bunch of novelty yarn from Target, an entire cone of a green polyester fingeringweight yarn that came free from the dump.

I am woefully short of Homespun, the mainstay of my Wearable Hugs projects. My remaining supply includes only two full skeins and a number of partials, all in different colors. If the colors I have went together better, I might consider doing a striped Hug, but looking at them in the pile together...I don't think so.

I located two preemie hats that I once knit from the pattern in The Joy of Knitting, as well as enough appropriate yarn for the hats to fill a mini-tote. I knit the originals as a personal tutorial in knit hats, and didn't have a place to donate them to. Now, a member of the Eats, Knits, & Leaves monthly knitting group at Toadstool Books is a nurse with the right connections, so I may pick up this little charity project again as a no-brainer filler between more complex knit objects.

Otherwise, I don't have much for plans that involve the stash. But I at least now have a better idea of what it includes, and can start to think about what's in stash when I'm considering a new project. Considering that this is the first time in 20 years that the stash has been pulled into a cohesive organizing system, that's a pretty significant improvement!

Coming Tomorrow - 100 Things About Folkcat!

Just wanted to give you a heads' up about that, since it's going to be a long - but hopefully interesting - post.