My Yarn Stash

So, I bought a yarn winder. I must cake all the yarn.

I love having a stash of craft supplies in my studio for those times when inspiration strikes and I want to start a new project immediately, without having to wait for yarn, fabric, or notions to ship to our house. We don't have a craft supply store near where we live, so anything I want to buy needs to be ordered online, bought when we are on holiday, or we have to plan a special trip to the city a few hours away. That being said, I don't want to have so much stash in the house that I feel overwhelmed or forget what I have. It's a delicate balance and one that I'm not sure I've completely figured out for my own preferences. As you'll see, I really didn't know exactly what I had in my yarn stash until I took on this project of organizing it.

Some of my yarn stash has been with me for years. A few skeins even traveled across the ocean with us when we moved from the states over 6 years ago. I have no idea why I haven't used them yet since I only kept the yarn that I really loved and was excited to use. I think part of the problem is that, until now, I have stored all of my yarn in baskets. Out of sight, out of mind. When we lived in Dublin, we were in a really small house where everything we owned was on display. One way to calm the clutter was to put everything into wooden and fabric baskets. This also kept the cats from stealing and destroying my yarn. It worked well for the space we had, but so much has changed since moving, and I am now lucky enough to have an entire room dedicated to crafting.

I don't need to worry about visual clutter in my studio; I love seeing all of my beautiful supplies sitting out on the shelf, ready to be used at a moment's notice. Anything that I don't want to see everyday (I'm looking at you ugly blocking mats) can get tucked away behind the cabinet doors at the bottom of the shelves. Eventually, I may show you more of what's in the studio: my fabric stash, natural dye materials, patterns and reference books, and my essential tools, but for now I just want to talk about my yarn stash.

In an ideal world, I would be able to look at my yarn stash and easily pick out enough yarn to make a beautiful sweater or tee shirt, or grab a luxurious skein and knit a new accessory. I see lots of people on YouTube talking about organizing their stash into neat plastic bins, separated into sweater quantities with printed out patterns, ready for them to pick up when they finish their current project. This just isn't what I'm working with though. Sure, I have multiple baskets and what feels like so much yarn and potential, but when I start to break it down by meters or weight, I don't even have enough of most of my individual balls of yarn to make mitts or a beanie. I've realized most of what I have is individual skeins or partial skeins that are left over from larger projects or were impulse buys when I was visiting a fancy yarn shop. The yarn I have also varies widely in weight and fibre content.

So I've started to think about most of my stash as 'scraps' and have separated those small balls out from my larger quantities. I've grouped most of these bits of yarn back into baskets, roughly organized by weight, and will try to think of scrappy projects that will use them in fun ways. Some of them may work well as accent colours for future, larger projects too.

The yarn that is left over after taking out the scraps looks a lot more inspiring to me now. I've paired single skeins where I think they might work well together in a single project, and I actually have a few yarns with multiple skeins. I frogged a couple of old projects that were sitting at the bottom of my yarn baskets and used my new yarn ball winder to make beautiful, tidy cakes of yarn to display on the shelf. It's so much easier to see how much I have now that everything is displayed together without the chaos of the small scraps.

This is what my yarn stash looks like now. On the left on the top shelf are my full skeins and multiple skeins that I have made plans for future projects and want to use soon. I like seeing them on display; a constant, happy reminder of what I could work on next. I know that you're not supposed to store yarn in cakes long term, but hopefully I actually use these up over the coming months. Also, seeing them stacked like this makes me incredibly happy, so I don't really care what I'm supposed to do.

Some of my future projects may be:
-My first pair of knitted socks made from the skein of pink and purple variegated sock yarn. I've been watching YouTube tutorials about knitting your first pair of socks and want to try to learn how to make them on double pointed needles. I'll probably use this pattern to get started: https://ravel.me/vanilla-socks-on-dpns
-A couple of beanies, one for myself and one for Daniel. For myself, I will use a skein of pink and a skein of red DK weight wool to crochet a two-colour ribbed beanie using this free pattern: https://www.deliacreates.com/two-tone-crochet-beanie-free-pattern-tutorial/. For Daniel, I will use the variegated black and grey worsted weight skeins to make a simple ribbed-brim style beanie, like the Petite Knit Weekend Hat: https://ravel.me/weekend-hat-5
-A gauzy mohair sweater, using the greyish blue cake of mohair that I got in Paris a couple of years ago. This was purchased to be paired with another yarn that was being made into a top, but I didn't end up liking how they looked together and I made the top without the mohair in the end. I think the Sadie Top by Woozy looks like the perfect romantic, gauzy sweater that will help me transition my knitting into spring while continuing to level up my skills. https://ravel.me/sadie-top

After these projects there will still be a few skeins of yarn left on the shelf, a few worsted weight skeins and a few chunkier weights. I have some vague ideas in mind, but will think more seriously about specific projects and patterns when they get closer to the top of my queue. I know that my inspiration shifts quickly, and I like being able to look for patterns that are exciting to me in the moment, as the seasons change and I see new projects online that I want to try out.

The rest of my yarn stash is still being stored in baskets for now. The white basket on the top shelf has scraps of sock, fingering, and sport weight yarns and a couple of partial skeins of cotton yarn left over from a baby blanket I made for a friend a couple of years ago. I'm not sure what most of these scraps will get made into, but I might make a couple of granny square bandanas for my hair from the cotton skeins when the weather gets warmer. Even though I have a rough plan for them, I didn't put them on display because I'm not feeling inspired for summery projects right now while it's still so cold in Ireland.

On the bottom shelf, the grey basket on the left has some full skeins that are nice, and that I want to keep, but that I don't feel inspired to use right now. There are a couple skeins of a very bulky alpaca blend that would make a delicious cowl, but it's a colour that I don't think would fit in with my wardrobe anymore. I might make it into a gift knit at some point. There is also a giant skein of orange wool and acrylic blend worsted weight yarn. I bought this shortly after we moved to Ireland in an attempt to find a yarn that I could use to continue making the crochet fox scarves I used to make for my Etsy shop when we lived in Portland. Once I closed my Etsy shop, I no longer had any desire to make these fox scarves anymore, but the yarn could be made into something else in the future potentially. There are also a few balls of worsted weight scraps tucked into this basket too.

This basket used to be overflowing, because I had a lot of acrylic scraps. If I'm being realistic with myself, I just don't enjoy crocheting or knitting with most acrylics anymore. I've kept a few blends or tiny scraps to use in amigurumi toys or other similar projects, but I've pulled most of these yarns out of my stash and will offer them to other crafters I know. They worked well for me when I was learning about different types of yarn and had a more restricted budget, but I'm lucky enough now to have several yarns that I feel more inspired by, made from natural fibres.

And the last basket, the grey one on the right of the bottom shelf, has partial skeins of fuzzy yarns. This is where I've organized the bits like a tiny scrap of angora that I have hoarded for years because it feels so amazingly soft, and the teeny bits of chunky cashmere I have. I also have some small amounts of sparkly mohair on mini cones, like what I used recently in my Sophie Scarf. I like using these scraps held double with another yarn or as accent rows in crochet projects, but I want to prioritize using some of them up soon. Turns out, I have a lot of these teeny balls of fluffy, impractical yarns.

I'm really pleased with what I've ended up with on these two shelves. I like having some yarn on display and the smaller quantities hidden away in baskets. Going through everything has helped me realize how much I have, and has helped me to fall back in love with the skeins I've already purchased. I'm currently working away on my knitted Step-by-Step sweater by Florence Miller, but I may start another small project to work on at the same time; it might be nice to work on some crochet to break up the monotony of knit stitches.

What does your yarn stash look like? Are you organized enough to buy yarn in the exact quantities that you need, or are you like me and end up with tons of left-over partial skeins filling up your stash?