Meltdown

It seems that the line between just right and too much is very very fine.

Now I have a stash, and I love my stash.  I am happy to have my stash and I am very very rarely overwhelmed by it.  It is all put away, I love looking at it, absorbing the colors, and I love playing with my stash too.  I never purchased any yarn with the intention that it should go in a stash although it all too often happened that way.  Every skein came with a dream, a vision of what I might knit.  Its just that my eyes are obviously way bigger than my ability to knit up those visions and turn them into reality.

But something happened this weekend that just tipped me over the edge.  Actually it was a couple of small things.

Remember how I said I was organizing a queue of projects, that I had them all together, but I didn't yet have a coherent list.  Well, I thought I would work on that.  I knew there were a few stray projects hiding in corners of my office, and a few small bags of yarn, but I knew what they were and I thought I knew what they wanted to be.

That is I thought I knew what I was doing with all my yarn. That was until I came to this pile of Cascade 220.  I remember buying it.  I remember talking to some friends in knitting group about which color would be best for a particular sweater, I just don't remember what that sweater was.

And it was driving me crazy.  Suddenly it was all too much.  I had yarn that I knew I bought for a particular purpose, the fact that I can log on to ravelry and find all kinds of wonderful ideas that would be perfect for this yarn was beside the point.  I wanted to know why I bought this yarn,this yarn which was sitting in my yarn closet, this yarn that I had no place to store.

You will be happy to know that I did not start tearing the sewing/yarn room apart.  I am particularly proud of myself about that.  And I did, by browsing through this blog and my lists of sweaters I liked, remember what I wanted to knit with this yarn, or at least I think I remember.  I haven't actually pulled the pattern out.

But suddenly, I had too much yarn.

Now I haven't bought new yarn for a couple of months, or almost a couple of months.  Some yarn came in December that I ordered way back in the summer, but that was bought months ago, and I have some yarn on hold at Yarn Central, which I actually meant to buy 6 weeks ago, but I haven't been to the store during that time.  But I haven't bought yarn.  And I am not sure I want to buy yarn because I really need to knit some of the yarn in that yarn closet to make more room, and I have more UFO's than I even care to think about.

But I also looked in my stash for yarn to possibly make some mittens.  I found two perfect colors of yarn.  I can imagine mittens out of each yarn.  I looked in the Selbuvotter book and I looked on Ravelry and I know exactly what I want to knit.  But the yarns don't go together.  I can envision a mitten with each one of them, but not the same mitten.  To fulfill these dreams I need to buy two more colors of yarn to go with the yarns already in my stash, so I can make two pairs of mittens.

There is a kind of odd logic to it, isn't there?

Once upon a time I would have said that buying yarn to finish a project from stash yarn doesn't really count as buying "new" yarn.  Self delusion is an important human survival tactic, no?

I do want to knit the mittens, and we are talking about very small quantities of yarn here.  But I just can't quite do it.  I am still in full overload mode.  

Perhaps next week.

Comments

[Gina]

Oddly enough, I remember that yarn, but I can't remember the pattern for which it was intended either. Granted, it is your stash, and why should I know... But we (the knitting group) all seem to remember patterns and projects for each other with alarming clarity. I'm alarmed that I cannot remember. I'm curious to know which pattern it was.

[Liana]

I've felt this way about all my fabric for a while, and I'm terrible about writing down exactly what the brilliant idea I had for it when I ordered it was. I'm trying to do better on that, but I'm really trying not to buy more fabric, or yarn, until I use up some of what I have. Says she after buying 4 lengths this Saturday, and a bag of yarn too. Good intentions. We know where they lead!

[materfamilias]

Did you read The Yarn Harlot's post for today which ends with her validation of the stash and the economic sense it makes? Maybe you need to . . . But I do know what you mean about getting overwhelmed.