Monday Musings: Taking Out the Stash

The yarn I ordered for Red Scarves from WEBS finally showed up. For some odd reason it took them a week to ship it, but once they did it got to me pretty fast. Have I taken a picture of it? Of course not: that would be too easy. I got Di.Ve Zenith in port, Knit One Crochet Too Camelino in garnet (now sadly sold out), and Noro Yuzen in 13 (I guess when you're Noro you don't need to come up with sexy color names). I've already started a scarf in the Zenith, which is a beautiful yarn, soft, squishy merino with terrific stitch definition; it's also splittier than a Hollywood couple, but probably not so bad if you're not cabling without a cable needle. At this point, however, I would get more impatient with using the cable needle than with the splittiness. Just be aware before you order this yarn, which is on closeout at WEBS at a terrific price, that it looks like it's cable plied, but it's not: it's just six tiny plies fairly loosely spun, and any maneuvers beyond knit and purl can get a bit tricky.
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Grant and Miss B were in Ohio over the weekend to take in a high-school production of The Wizard of Oz, with his sister's daughter in the role of the Scarecrow. I was not stunned to hear that they had a great time and she did a great job. Taz and I held down the fort at home.
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While Taz watched Toy Story 3, his new favorite video, I addressed myself to the house. I'm trying to get it, if not exactly spartan, at least a bit less cluttered before the holiday company shows up. I made considerable progress in this endeavor over the weekend: I have put huge quantities of clutter in the kitchen and living room in their place, and now have to slog through the residual wads of paper that always remain. Those wads are pretty small, however, compared to, yes, my stash. I don't really know how much yarn I have, just that it's a lot, and decluttering would probably be easier if I had less. Let us suppose, however, that I have a hundred balls. I'm pretty sure I have more, but let's say a hundred for the moment. If I knit up a skein a week, not an especially ambitious goal when I'm focused on getting a project done, I'd dispatch that yarn in two years. As you might guess, the mere idea of being out of yarn gives me the willies, but, truthfully, I am quite confident that at that rate I wouldn't run out in two years, or even three or four, but I would free up a significant amount of space. This of course assumes that I wouldn't buy any more yarn in the meantime, which, let's face it, isn't terribly realistic, but I really haven't been buying anything lately just because it's there. (Well, all right, Wollmeise, but it's not there that much, hence the temptation.) Even the WEBS purchase was motivated by the fact that I had very little red yarn, odd as that seems. Therefore my goal: I will consume at least one skein of yarn a week until I can fit all of my yarn into a closet and a wardrobe. The majority of this will be gift and charity knitting — since, if I keep everything I knit, I may find myself with less of a yarn problem but more of a clothing problem. I will refrain from buying yarn except for charity projects for which none of my existing yarn is suitable, and even then I will be circumspect. I will also do a monthly State of the Yarn post.

Wish me luck.