Hello crafty world! Today, I’ll be talking all about my yarn stash. Yup – airing the yarn out, spring cleaning, joyful testing and all that stuff we just don’t talk about. I actually do not live with any yarn stash shame – Yarn Dyer! Hi! but I do understand that not everyone likes to talk about it and do what makes you happy.
For me, I’m such a functional person that I rarely buy or have something that doesn’t have a purpose. I don’t know if it ties in with my mathematical brain or just a separate personality trait. I have a hard time being emotional towards inanimate objects and rarely have sentimental feelings towards objects. Maybe because I’m not a parent. I feel like that kind of thing often revolves around people’s children and memories of them growing up. In any case, I love getting rid of things. What feels better than dropping things off at Goodwill or selling something for a bit of cash?
It’s the time of year when I would normally go through my closet and donate whatever clothes I hadn’t worn over the winter. I do the same thing in the fall with the summer clothes. I know I’m not alone. I’m not a big shopper but a refresh and seeing what’s left is always nice. I figure, why not do the same with my yarn? So, last weekend, I did my first annual (probably) airing of the yarn stash and setting the yarn I no longer want aside for a charitable donation.
For the most part, it was yarn leftovers and primarily worsted weight leftovers. For sock yarn scraps, I do still intend to work these up into various projects. I’ll be talking more about that over time, but for now, I’ll just say that if I don’t start making more progress on that soon, I will rethink my ability and willingness to do so.
My stash overtook 3 boxes that I have in my craft room. They aren’t large boxes, they are a small box that actually is meant to be used as a filing cabinet system if that puts it into perspective. It’s probably the size that fits legal paper one way and standard paper the other.
One bin had all fingering weight yarn in it. I didn’t end up donating much of this because I do hope to work up some projects. I’m actually wondering if anyone wants to do a charity make a long or even a charity focused livestream (or both!). Let me know in the comments or by messaging me on Instagram @agirlandherwool if you are interested!
The rest of my yarn is a lot of older yarn that has just been sitting around for a while. I figure if I haven’t used it now, why should I think I’m going to start. Buying new yarn is just the best, isn’t it, and I’d rather just buy the perfect yarn for a project than make something work. I guess that leads into two thoughts. One, I don’t mean to sound like I just willy nilly buy yarn and then years later donate it all away. I’m actually quite the opposite. Instead, I rarely buy yarn and research exactly what I want for the project. That’s why I’m in the situation I’m in. The other thought is that the yarn I’m looking to part with is all leftovers. There are a few skeins that are untouched because I bought an extra skein to make sure I had enough. Nothing that I’m getting rid of did I buy, never use, and now I’m wanting to just part with it. I don’t why I felt the need to justify, but I think we all have lots of leftovers and that’s what I’m here focusing on.
My thoughts as I sorted was to try to be realistic. How much crafting time do I really have and when I have time to work, what am I drawn to? I only will be able to make so many charity items and I personally prefer to work with the fingering weight yarn I have. This means that even though I may not get to all of those skeins, I know for certain, I won’t get to the worsted weight skeins. So those went to the donation pile.
After going through everything, I had 3 empty bins. I decided I wanted one bin for my stash and the other two to be for my business. I started to fill up my one bin and decided once it was full, that was it. If I wanted more yarn, I need to finish up some that was in there. I think this will be a good policy and allow me to really decide what is worth having. I have quite a bit of yarn that I plan to donate, hopefully to a school, but otherwise to an organization that wants it. Again, it’s a lot of partial skeins so it’s not really worth trying to destash. Plus it’s been around for a while.
Here’s what I kept:
1. Sock yarn – I didn’t have much of it honestly and I like the 4 or 5 skeins I had.
2. Sock yarn leftovers – for charity items. I do plan to reassess this at the end of the summer. If I haven’t used them in the less busy time of the year, then it’s time to re-evaluate what I want to keep and what I want to donate.
3. Baby yarn – some really soft, good for kids yarn that I use for gifts. I was torn about this one, but it’s a good thing to have in stash. You really just never know when you’ll want to throw a baby hat in with a gift.
4. Rauma leftovers from my Altheda sweater – I LIVE in this sweater and I just wasn’t ready to part with the leftovers. I think this was one of those ‘what brings me joy’ moments where I thought “this brings me sooo much joy” and so it stayed.
5. My tiny fiber stash – it’s really not much.
Everything else is being donated or turned into charity items. I’m so happy with the results and that I’ve finally gotten rid of yarn I have known for a long time I won’t be using. I’d love to know if you do anything of the sort or what you generally do with leftovers. Do you use everything up to the bitter end? Throw away leftovers? Keep it for a just in case scenario?
It’ll be interesting to come back to this and see how much I’m using and how this continues over time. I’ll plan to keep you updated.
If you want to see anything “in person,” you can watch the vlog here: