Month: January 2015

Inventory #1 – January : I Have a Lot of Yarn!

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It’s Inventory Time!!! I meant to post this last week, but it was Birthday Week in the Russell household, so I was a little caught up celebrating, eating cake, and turning 30. Which means now I’m old enough that my knitting obsession is socially acceptable, right? Anyhow, when I decided to do this challenge, I knew that I needed to keep track of the process. If I can see how much progress I’m making, I’ll be much more likely to stick with using up my yarn stash. So here it is in all its glory!

My Stash as of January 2015. It’s so big my husband doesn’t have anywhere to sit on the couch.

My stash includes yarns from Bernat, Berroco, Brooklyn Tweed, Caron, Classic Elite, Debbie Bliss, Heather Prime Alpaca, Jamieson’s, Jojoland, Lang, Lily, Lion, Loops & Threads, Lorna’s Laces, tons of Malabrigo, Mirasol, Misti Alpaca, Nashua Handknits, Noro, Plymouth, Red Heart, Twize, and Universal. It includes many full skeins/balls of yarn as well as leftovers from past projects (even some really tiny bits!).

So what are the numbers on this bad boy? Well…it’s a little scary. The total mass of all this yarn is 5000 g, which is just over 11 pounds! This adds up to approximately 11,500 yards of yarn…which is more than Ravelry estimates I have used in my projects over the last five years! That Ravelry number may not be exact, but it accounts for almost 50 projects. So that is a good approximation of how many projects will be needed to use up my stash. Yikes!

How did I calculate all this? I kept track of everything in a Google spreadsheet. For the full skeins that I was lucky enough to still have the labels intact, I just copied down the information from the label, including the mass and yardage. Partial skeins were weighed in my kitchen scale, and I looked up the yardage per mass on Ravelry. There were a few skeins that I had no idea of the manufacturer, so I estimated the yardage per mass based on similar yarns I own.

The trick to using all of this up is going to be finding creative ways to use those half skeins and even smaller bits. My focus in the early going will probably be on the easy parts, those full skeins that I can turn into anything. I mean, I have to build some momentum to get through all this. I am just a bit overwhelmed at how much knitting there is to do!

In summary, here are the numbers for January:

  • 69 different yarns/colorways remaining
  • 5000 g remaining
  • 11,587 yards remaining
  • 0 projects completed in 2015

Do you think I’m crazy for trying to knit through all this yarn in 2015? How much yarn do you have in your stash?

 

Getting Started + Coming Soon

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Here it is…my first post! I’ve been thinking about starting a blog for years, but never had an idea that I could write about for more than a single post. I finally hit on one last month when I realized that all my yarn was overflowing my bookshelf. I have spent A LOT of money on nice yarn for my knitting projects over the years. Often I go into a yarn store just to browse and come out with $50 worth of beautiful yarn with no plan for how I’m going to use it. And then the next week I buy more.

This is obviously pretty wasteful, and perhaps even bordering on addiction. And let’s face it:  since my apartment is not that big, I should not be wasting space on yarn I’m not even using. So this year I’m going to do my best to use up all my yarn instead of buying more. To add accountability, I’ll be keeping track of my progress through this blog. I’ll provide regular updates on how much of my stash is left and what projects I’ve been working on, as well as posts on a variety of other topics including book and product reviews, descriptions of projects I made prior to this challenge, sewing, and photography.

My knitting shelf. It doesn’t look that bad, right? Don’t be deceived – there is a lot of yarn lurking in those boxes!

Here are some posts that you can expect to see in the near future:

  • Initial inventory – how much yarn do I really have?
  • How I made a photography lightbox
  • A project I completed in December

I hope you enjoy reading about my projects, and I would love to hear from you in the comments section!

Do you have too much yarn/fabric/other? What are you planning to make this year? Please chime in using the comments section below.