Yarn Diet

I was hoping to have some photos of the already completed holiday knitting (well, what I haven’t already given away), but due to technical difficulties, the photos are stuck on the camera. *sigh* I think I’ll be doing a little digital camera shopping this weekend.

So, hopefully I’ll have photos this weekend.

My yarn diet is not going so well. My yarn stash has grown quite large, so this past spring I decided that I needed to put a hold on buying any yarn until I had reduced my stash significantly. I had already bought the yarn I was planning on using for holiday gifts, so I figured this would be a fairly simple resolution to stick to. I spend way too much time looking at patterns and then getting even better ideas for gifts, so that I now have to buy new yarn. And of course, I never return any yarn as I might find another use for it later.

So I fell off the diet after a few weeks. But I was only buying yarn for gifts for other people and then some sock yarn (and sock yarn doesn’t count, check any knitter’s blog and it’s practically a given). Then I realized that the Wool Gathering was coming up in September, so of course, I had to hold off on the yarn diet until that was over. It’s very important to support local businesses and I’m very supportive.

I went back on the yarn diet at the end of September. Since then, I have acquired 16 more skeins of yarn. I will admit that it doesn’t sound good, but really it’s not that bad. Two skeins were gifts from a colleague who brought them back to me from Scotland – gifted yarn doesn’t count. Four skeins were bought for holiday gifts because I decided that the patterns originally chosen were too difficult and I therefore needed new yarn for a simpler pattern – so I’m not even going to get to wear the final products myself, so they really shouldn’t count. Three skeins for a new holiday gift project that I had to add. The other seven skeins…well, I needed lace blocking wires for one of the holiday gifts and I was able to add some items to the order without the shipping cost going up, so I bought seven skeins of yarn for myself. Since most of my knitting has been for other people, it’s nice to buy something just for me. Besides, this was much more environmentally friendly than using those plastic peanuts for packing the lace blocking kit. The yarn cushioned the kit very nicely which was a good thing since the box got smashed in the postal service, so really those skeins shouldn’t count either. Right?

But now I’m really on a yarn diet and there won’t be any new yarn until I’ve reduced my stash by one 18 gallon tub…or maybe at least half a tub. Or better yet, I have to complete at least 25 projects from my stash. Yeah, that sounds good. Oh, and sock yarn purchases and gifted yarn don’t count.