As part of moving house we're also de-cluttering.
What does this have to do with a craft blog, you might ask?
Well, as part of the de-cluttering I am de-stashing and reducing my crafty things.
Before I began I had 144 different yarns in my stash (on ravelry), plus lots of un-recorded yarn, totaling enough mileage to travel to the coast and back! I knew I needed to have a method for sorting out my yarn, so initially I turned to Ravelry. (If you're a knitter or crocheter and you've never visited www.raverly.com then I heartily recommend it!)
One of the fun things you can do in Ravelry is to have a page of favourite patterns, things you might make one day, things which are inspiring. I used my favourites to decide what the next year's knitting might look like for me. I used this to generate a "queue" to which I could then allocate yarn.
20 yarns are required for my queue. They're going to be a mixture of sweaters for me, sweaters for the toddler, scarves, hats, and ponchos.
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| 20 yarns in my queue, lots of colours! |
So that's 124 yarns which are not required.
I then looked at the remaining 124 yarns and I asked myself some questions:
- Would I buy this now?
- Will I wear something that I make with this yarn (or would I give it to someone)?
- Would it be expensive to replace?
- Do I want the yarn more than the space?
Some yarns went into a bag to let my knitting group look at, and anything they didn't want has now gone off to be donated to charity.
Some yarns went into a "for sale or trade" box - well, two boxes, containing 57 yarns, several with more than one skein. I've sold several of these now.
This left me with 70 yarns which are not queued, but that I want to keep.
28 are handspun, which I'm clearly not going to get rid of! Though some of the skeins are more art-yarn than knittable yarn, so they may end up being some kind of display after we move.
And that leaves 42 yarns. 26 are sock yarns so arguably they could just be socks. 19 are lace or light fingering, so I see a number of scarves in my future. All of these are yarns that I just love, though. Either the colours or the memory of where they came from.
This also means that I know what's in my stash now, and there's nothing that I wouldn't be happy to make into a garment, accessory, etc, and wear.
