WIP Wednesday: return of the gloves

Do you remember this sad little story?

It has a happy ending:

Turns out that one of the advantages of sorting the stash is that teeny-tiny balls of handspun might appear from between the cracks.  This really *is* part of the same lot as the other stuff, by the way: I never (or very rarely) end up with matching amounts of singles on the bobbin when I spin, so, when I ply, one always runs out significantly before the other.  I have the habit of winding the excess singles off into a plying bracelet, and plying them together (if I’m making 2-ply), or chain plying them together for a 3-ply.  Sometimes I wonder why I do this: it seems to be turning frugality into a bit of an obsession, could I ever really need those last two grams of yarn?  Don’t I have enough stash, really?  Turns out, sometimes it really is a good idea.

This is how far I got with the gloves before running out: the cuff, thumb and hand have been knit, including a set of short rows designed to ensure that the glove’s fingers all start at or near the actual base of my fingers. (A pet peeve).  FO Friday??  Wait and see…

The State of the Stash

Remember me pledging the Year of Stash Accountability?  well, if you don’t know where you’re starting from, how can you know where you’re going, let alone how far away it is?  So I catalogued all the yarn and fibre in the house (note: the fleeces live in the shed.  I’m saving them for warmer weather).  All. of. it.  With photographs.  The pruriently inclined can check out my Ravelry stash for the full, gory details, but for those who prefer statistics, I present a summary here:

• I have 18.8kg of stash (fibre and yarn combined);
• Which includes 59.9km yarn (that’s 36.9 miles)
• Of the yarn, 14.057km are handspun, so 45.245km are millspun;
• I have over 12km of laceweight yarn, and 13.3km of sock weight yarn;
• Almost 17km of yarn (apart from lace and sock yarn) is specifically intended for weaving;
• I have almost twice as much unspun fibre, by weight, as I have handspun yarn (5.5 kg vs. 2.81 kg). And I thought I could get it all spun up by the end of the year!!

Wow.  I don’t think I need to buy anything else for a while, do you?!

Acquisitions

A couple of extra projects have found their way into my home in recent weeks.  100g of silk/merino top, bought at my local spinning group’s Christmas party:

And a skein of sock yarn, colour ‘Rincewind’, from the Twisted Disc yarn club:

Between them, they probably represent tens of hours of project-time.  Especially the fibre, which must be spun, then knit (or woven, I suppose, but I’m seeing lace in this fibre’s future).  This is not necessarily a bad thing – after all, that’s a lot of entertainment for a very low hourly rate – but it’s so easy to become overwhelmed by all those hours, sitting there waiting for you to get around to them.  By all that potential, sitting in plastic boxes (now bursting at the edges, if you can even get the lids on at all).  And then, guilt comes creeping in: anxiety pops a hairy little head around the corner.  The other half starts eye-rolling at you, and the perpetual worry of moth infestation threatens your precious hoard.

I’ve long since sold or given away all of my less well-adivsed yarn and fibre purchases, leaving me with a stash that is much smaller than in previous years.  But I’m still acquiring materials faster than I’m using them up.  It’s only getting worse, too, as I am neglecting my ‘personal’ stash in favour of working on designs with my own hand-dyed yarns and fibre: work-related knitting, if you will.

So I’ve decided that 2012 will be the year of stash accountability.  Between now and the New Year, I will attempt to log all my stashed yarn and fibre in a spreadsheet, and enter as much as possibly into Ravelry.  From the start of January, I’ll be logging what I use assiduously.  I’d like to say I’ll be posting monthly updates on my stash reduction, but I know how badly I tend to do with schedules and commitments like that, so I’ll stick with the recording pledge for now, and comment on progress here whenever I have something interesting to say…  I will be ably assisted in my goals by the Ravelry Stash Knit Down group, who are a wonderful, inspiring and warm-hearted bunch.  (they also come up with some really crazy ideas.  Check out the 12 12s in 2012 thread if you need proof…)

I’ll also make a commitment always to have one ‘personal’ project on the needles as well as any work based knitting that’s going on.  I think that should help me make time to enjoy the stuff I already have tucked away.