Let's talk about STASH...

Hmm, so it's been quite a while since I've posted here! Let me start out by saying that my "August Finishitis" was a bit of a FAIL, that then rolled into September Finishitis, which led to me starting 3 new projects (2 of which have been completed) and nothing else got done. I haven't touched either of my sweaters, the DYO hat design, or much else lately. The Vanilla toe-up socks have gotten some needle time, as have the Socks of Awesomeness, along with the three new projects - the Birthday Cardi, the Seaside BSJ, and the Ravens BSJ. I decided to forgo the August SolidSocks KAL project, and then the September as well. Now we're into October, and while I really WANT to do the green cabled socks I have in mind, there's yarn guilt holding me back.

Oh, the yarn guilt! You know how people sometimes say they have too much yarn, and then they giggle a bit and you know they don't really think it's too much? Well I can say with a straight face that i.have.too.much.yarn. It's taken over my storage areas. It's taken over my bedroom, my thoughts and my future knitting plans. I truly have more than I could ever knit. And while I love just about everything that I have, there are many things that I just do not see myself ever getting around to working with.

Here's some interesting stats for you, because I am a numbers geek:

I've been knitting for about 4 years now.

I've been knitting socks for about 2 1/2 years.

I have approximately 494,227 yards of yarn in my stash right now **

I have bought 18,668 yards of yarn so far in 2010.

I have knit 7917 yards of yarn so far in 2010.

So as you can see, my stashing habits far outweigh the speed at which I knit!! I don't even want to think about what all this yarn cost. Not to mention the books, patterns, needles, project bags, stitch markers, etc.

While I know I will never, ever be one of those mythical knitters who works on only one project at a time, or buys only for the current project and never keeps any kind of stash (come on, who are they really kidding?), I think I need to move more in that direction that my current super-stashing, total project-whoring ways. It's literally weighing me down to have this much. I bought some sock yarn recently, and mentally talked myself out of about half of what was in my online shopping cart with the thought "you're never going to get to knit this stuff, you'll just end up selling it on Ravelry at some point...". And much of what I have, I do love, and want to knit with! At some point, I had specific plans for at least 75% of what I've acquired. Sure, there's some stuff that I bought because it was pretty, because it was something I wanted to try, or just because it was something I'd never seen before. But for the most part, especially with my sock stash, it had a destiny. The Koigu from MSWF in '09 was going to be No-Purl Monkeys. The Wisdom North Pole that I bought last month was going to be some fun Christmas socks. The Felici in Chimney would become matching awesome socks for my sons. I could go on and on, but I won't, because it's pretty discouraging. It's like that feeling at mealtime of your eyes being bigger than your stomach - My eyes are apparently bigger than my knitting speed.

With all this said, I am sort of at a loss now as to what to do. Stop buying yarn, well yeah that's a good start. I spent an hour this morning putting the majority of my stash into my "sale" page on Ravelry, and posting about it on a few forums there. Beyond that, I'm not really sure. The weight of my stash is crushing, and it's bringing me down. These numbers have been very eye-opening for me, and I'm hopeful that this confessional blog entry can be the start of something positive here in my knitting zone.

~Jess

** I can't believe that this is true! I have a stupid, non-Excel spreadsheet program that I cannot seem to get the "autosum" function to work on, so I added the yardages by hand on a calculator. I hope there was some user error involved here!!!