I achieved SABLE (stash acquisition beyond life expectancy) a long time ago. Some people can only buy yarn when they know the specific project they’ll use it for. Not me, I buy yarn when I see it and it’s pretty and squishy, and then I figure out what I’m going to do with it later.
Since I knit a lot of socks and shawls, most of my stash is in fingering or sock yarn weight. It also means that I can buy a skein or two of yarn without worrying about not having enough to knit a larger project like a sweater.
Part of the fun of having a stash is stash busting. That’s when you find a project you want to make and comb through your own stash to get the yarn to make it.
One of my favorite designers, Paper Daisy Creations, is doing a MKAL (mystery knit along) for a shawl starting in September. I want to participate so I decided to shop my own stash for the yarns I’ll need.
Here’s an example of one of her prior shawls–aren’t her patterns gorgeous?
This pattern called for two skeins of a dark contrasting color, and then six complimentary colors.
I keep my yarn in totes sorted by color family (warm or cool colors). When Pudding saw me get out the totes she was very excited. Pudding, like her mother, LOVES yarn. She loves to roll in it and sometimes lays on it like a hen on an egg.
Pudding: Did you…did you just compare me to poultry?
She had to rub on the totes to let me know they belonged to her (and so did their contents).
She then climbed INTO the tote and growled at me when I pulled her out.
At first I thought about doing something in pinks and purples, and working with different texture yarns. I pulled several yarns, including some mohair, to see if that would work.
I liked the colors I chose, but decided that the mohair probably wasn’t a great idea for the pattern.
I wound up going the exact opposite with my colors and decided to do the shawl all in blues.
From left to right: Adelaide Victoria Fingering in Dark Side of the Moon, Mt Ruston Fred in Pewter, Lowlander Yarn Studio Sockalicious Fingering in Color Me Curious, Mt Ruston Fred in Faded Denim, Primrose Yarns Adelaide in Pillow Talk, Manos del Uruguay Alegria in Natural, Acero, and Pescador.
Part of the fun of stash busting is remembering where you got the yarn. The Mt. Ruston and Lowlander Yarn Studio yarns either came from Rhinebeck (which is like knitting Comic Con) or from the Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival. I have fond memories of both as knitting festivals are my cozy, autumn happy place.
The Primrose yarn was a subscription I got back when I was just (sniffle) a little baby knitter.
Plus, it’s just fun to look at yarn, you know?
If you want to see how these colors work up in the MKAL pattern, you can follow me on Instagram at @ElyseIndeed.
Pudding and I want to know what your stash is like. Have you achieved SABLE? Do you need to have a project in mind before you buy yarn? Tell us all about it!
Not with yarn, but with counted cross stitch – patterns, kits, thread, etc. I’ve already told my youngest sister that she is the heir to it all. She actually finishes many more projects.
My cats get equally interested when I pull out the tote boxes. But they are uninterested in getting inside or lying down, fortunately.
Definitely at SABLE. I knit a lot of sweaters, and also shawls. And have trouble buying yarn unless i “know” what it’s for. Only problem is I’ll think I’m going to knit 3 sweaters and 2 shawls in the next month… At least half the time I end up using the yarn for something completely different than I bought it for.
Istanbul has a yarn bazaar.
There’s the spice bazaar the antique bazaar and everyone talks about the grand bazaar but there is also an entire yarn bazaar, and as far as I can tell most of the yarn sold under European labels is actually produced in Turkey, so…yeah.
Between that and the fact that in Iceland they sell yarn in the supermarkets, I have found my “oh I’ll get so much knitting done while I travel” naïveté resulted in some serious SABLE problems.
I love Pudding’s reaction to the yarn. My cat also likes to sit on things like a hen (including, sometimes, my phone) and I jokingly ask if she’s waiting for it to hatch.
I had SABLE for jewelry/beadwork supplies up until the pandemic. Endless confined hours requiring occupation meant a gradual but diligent emptying-out and sorting and sending-away of mass quantities of beads. Also sent away many things I had made, previously languishing unseen in cupboards. Releasing them into the wild felt good. I still have a lot of beads but the collection now reflects the idiom in which I believe I’ll work again someday. And if it so happens that I never again feel the urge to make beady things, I have gotten much, much better at letting go.
Just taking a moment to compliment your beautiful cat! Pudding looks a lot like our Sparky the Wonder Cat, just with shorter hair. Hopefully, Pudding runs your house as well as Sparky does ours.
I did reach SABLE so last year and this year have been exclusively focused on the projects for which I bought the yarn. I did 26 projects last year and am on numbers 23-25 now for this year (I usually have a couple going at a time). I have been pretty successful in not buying new yarn but Sugarplum Circus and Luminous Brooklyn are darn tempting!
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ the Lady Pudding.
This post made me laugh, tickled my insides, and improved a humid Friday! I’m a SABLE with fabric, though trying hard to work through it. Currently on a doll kick, though 3″ dolls don’t use much!
I’m a needlepoint SABLE. I have enough thread and canvases to keep me occupied for the rest of my life, yet still I buy more thread, and a friend gave me her late mother’s stash. (We found a bill from 1982 for $2500 for one needlework store visit!) I’ve stopped buying canvases unless presented with another grandchild to make a stocking for. I want to plug a very talented woman on Etsy who dyes yarn for knitting. The Zippy Zebra has done some incredible colors for me in weights that I can use for my needlepoint. Her eye for color is amazing. I tried to learn how to knit just to use more of her yarns, but that ship has sailed.
Oh yeah, definitely achieved SABLE. I am a complete sucker for color, especially multicolors, tonals, etc. I also fall occasionally for MKAL projects. Right now I am working on Mary Annarella’s “Who Ya Gonna Shawl?” (which everyone else probably finished months ago). I like your idea of storing yarn by color; I might have to try that. I have lots of different weights and “ages” (meaning vintage yarn) so it would require lots of sorting. Or I could call it communing with my stash….
I have a bunch of really old and randomly donated yarn in my basement in card board boxes that my cats have been using as their playground for a while now. If I open a bin up in the house one of them will jump right in immediately. Sometimes one of them will drag my working yarn right out of the bag at my side and I have to stop and chase it down. But I love the two of them anyway.
Have I achieved SABLE? Probably. Will I admit to my spouse? Never! Luckily, I like knitting with thick yarn, so it actually goes quicker than one would think. Unfortunately, I also like making big afghans, so I get stuck on projects for a while. Happy crafting, all!
Not with yarn because I have been very rude and aggressive with myself about only buying for a project I am ready to cast on that day, but I passed SABLE a while ago with counted cross stitch and other embroidery projects. I keep telling myself I’ll work on them…..
I’ve achieved SABLE as well with yarn! I love thicker yarn just because my old hands find it easier to knit or crochet with. Last winter I made 5 afghans. My favourite was the sock monkey pattern that my daughter grabbed right away. It’s home is now in Seoul
Even though @DiscoDollyDeb would accuse me of achieving SABLE, I haven’t yet! I also like to buy yarn and then decide what to do with it later. I’m working on busting some of my stash now, but I also have a lot of yarn because my favorite knits are sweaters. It’s too warm to wear them; I like the process, not the product. Currently have a couple WIPs that I should try to finish before I cast on again, but something else always catches my eye. I’ve been knitting with the Wes Anderson yarn from Pancake and Lulu.
I probably have achieved SABLE, but I refuse to admit it. My STBX finally verbalized it as – purchasing yarn is a different hobby to using yarn. He’s right, dang it.
The problem I have is that I love the feel of fingering and lace weight yarns in the shop, and always forget that I hate crocheting with it. The projects that I actually complete always used worsted or DK weight, at the lightest. So I have all these beautiful fingering yarns with pops of color and every time I try to start working with them, I just keep frogging my projects.
Also Lady Pudding is a cat of discernment and taste and obviously, she needs to be allowed back into the yarn tote of heaven. Yes.
I’ve reached SABLE on yarn, and probably also fabric. I go through phases where I say, no buying yarn on impulse, only when you have a project in mind, and there was even a point where I picked up all my UFOs and finished or frogged them. I even organized my craft room and stash into bins. each project got it’s own bin, and random yarn got sorted by quality/weight.
I’ve decided that collecting yarn and yarn crafts are two separate endeavors. MY current dilemma is that I’ve put a kabosh on buying yarn temporarily, but I have a new pattern that none of my yarn will work for that I’m itching to start.
With fabric, it’s always that I buy more than I need, so I end up with all this extra material. I like to call them project seeds.
SABLE with quilt fabric.
I’m at SABLE in several craft categories, although some was intentional (when the publisher I worked for closed I was left with a TON of floss, fabric, and sample product, so I grabbed 2 skeins of every floss color DMC made at the time because FREE FLOSS YES before letting my model stitchers have at the rest) and some of it inherited (the piles of yarn my aunts left when they passed.)
I did attempt a destashing project with my yarn a couple years ago by making scarves and hats for friends and coworkers for Christmas, but then I kept finding cool yarns on clearance so… about half of them were destash and half new. And I’ve been destashing stitching supplies by putting them up in my Etsy shop as I find them, when I know it’s something I’m never going to use.
I’m not a knitter, but I am the mother of one (@Queen_Victoriaa, above), and I do like the idea articulated in several comments here that acquiring yarn and crafting with yarn are two different hobbies. I think that concept can be applied to books too: acquiring a book and finally getting the time & inclination to read it are two vastly different things, as my overstuffed bookshelves and kindle will attest.
I am not a crafty person, but I am 100% here for the beautiful Pudding. These are wonderful pictures of her. Clearly your yarn needs some pulled threads from her dainty claws and to be dusted with her fur.
Not only have I achieved SABLE, but I still also find a new pattern and need to go out and buy more yarn because this pattern is special and I have a vision and nothing in my SABLE stash is quite right enough.
Currently gearing up for Joji’s Fall KAL and so far only 1 skein is from OLD stash, and another skein is from earlier this year… so 7ish brand new skeins. I really need to have a yarn sale! And Cold Sheep in 2024.
I am trying to fend off SABLE! I live in NYC and told myself I would not acquire more yarn than can fit in one storage container that lives under my bed—but that went out the window during COVID… plus I have an annual tradition of going to Rhinebeck with my best friend and buying yarn to knit matching sweaters. And I’m a slow knitter so that project takes up many months of time and does not decrease my stash at all! I only just finished the cardigan that we bought yarn for last Rhinebeck lol. Thanks for the stash-busting inspiration!