The Knitting Fiend

When I imagine my stash, I picture this built in cabinet my husband designed and installed in the family room. He suggested open shelving. I responded:

“Hhmmm… Why not add doors?”

It may be a bit messy in there, but it’s contained. It’s very handy to have yarn stored right next to the couch where I usually sit to knit.

What’s in there? A bag containing 1 sweater worth of yarn, a few left over balls from recent projects, and assorted knick knacks.

Ordinarily, when people ask about my knitting stash, that’s all I’ll admit to. In my primmest highest pitched Catholic Schoolgirl voice I insist:

“Stashing is a sickness.”

I tell them I try very hard to avoid accumulating too much stash. I minimize visits to places like Stitches. (If I go, I’ll buy with no planned project at hand. )

I try hard to avoid group trips to yarns stores. They tell me the whole fun is shopping and buying; I agree.

Then, with a trembling voice, I say “But, it’s too dangerous.” They all laugh.

But it’s not funny. Look what’s happened to me, even without visiting these festivals:

Above Left: The closet in the computer room by the kitchen.

See the yarn cones on the top shelf? See the variegated multicolor stuff? When I bought the yarn, I thought it would look good plied with red, but it turned out more attractive plied with yellow. I actually made myself a sideways knit hooded sweater out of the multicolor yarn last fall. It looks really cute and is fun to wear to football games or when raking leaves.

The only problem: The sweater only used 1/4 of the cone. The remaining cone is now in the stash. So is the yellow cone I used to ply the yarn and so is the red cone I thought would look good with the variegated yarn.

Notice the stuff on the floor? One bag is the vestiges of 4 bags of yarn my mom brought over when her friend Jill decided to gave up knitting to take up quilting. The rest are left over bags from other projects. (More yarns from “the Jill collection” is on it’s way next December. That means I need to take this stuff down to it’s official storage location.)

Center: Two more cones. I won the green stuff as an extra thank you prize when I attended a machine knitting seminar. The pink stuff came free when I bought my knitting machine. I have used both to make garments. Still, the remaining stuff is still in the stash!

I bet you’re wondering if these two cones are in the “computer room”? No, they are in the “sewing room”. Yes. the “sewing room”. It’s upstairs across from the bedroom.

Above right: Look what else is in the sewing room. Magazines! Yes. The very magazines documenting the wonders of the 80’s. Notice more cones of yarn. To be honest, there are also a few boxes containing assorted left over balls of yarn, but I didn’t want to document the full horror of the sewing room.

Ok, so now you’re thinking: “That’s it. That must be all the yarn Lucia has. After all, she doesn’t stash.”

You would be wrong.

The machine knitting room, and “official yarn stash organizer area” are in the basement. The official yarn storage shelf is shown to the left; the “overflow box” is shown below:

And guess what? Nearly all this stuff is either a) left overs from projects b) stuff given to me by people clearing out their stashes or bought very recently. I’ll probably eventually use it all.

Still, it’s a lot of stuff!

I think you can see why visiting yarn markets is dangerous for me.