Jessie: In New Hampshire where the twenty inches of recently fallen snow have almost completely melted!
I don’t know if this happens to you, but I seem to experience things on some sort of a looping system. There are waves of work, of leisure, of energetic pursuits, and of inertia. I find there are times when my calendar is filled to the brim with social engagements and other times when I have long stretches of relative quiet. Then, the cycles seem to start over again.
Every spring, at just about this time I am overcome with the urge to whittle down the contents of the pantry and the freezer. There is something so satisfying about using up a well-intentioned, but ill-considered purchase of spelt flour! Just seeing the back wall of the freezer for the first time in ages lightens my heart and mood.
Lately, I am in the grips of a stash-busting frenzy. If you are someone who knits or crochets I expect you can relate. For those of you who don’t, a yarn stash is something akin to a reader’s to-be-read pile. Like its towering, toppling literary cousin, the yarn stash is both a source of joy and of guilt. Skein after skein of squishy wool and shimmering silk, lofty mohair and cloud-like cashmere sit waiting for their turn on the needles just as the TBR pile books do for their time to be read.
Just like books, yarn calls out to be acquired. It whispers or it shouts, and once it is in your house, it cannot be entirely ignored. My stash is mostly organized in my studio, a room on the second floor of the ell connecting the main house to the barn. It ought to be out of sight and out of mind in a room tucked a bit off the beaten track. It isn’t.
I am of two minds on the subject of stash. I love to always have something readily available to cast on the needles on a whim. After all, when you live in the country, especially in a place where 20 inches of snow in April can leave your home without electricity or internet for days at a time, a new knitting project might just be the only thing to keep despair at bay. If it is storming there is no way to make it to the nearest yarn shop, especially since it is fifteen miles away.
That said, perhaps just quite so much stash is not necessary. In fact, it can feel a bit unwieldy. After all, I easily have a lifetime supply of power outage knitting already carefully stored here, there, and everywhere. I could likely knit a cozy hat for each of the residents of my village without adding a single yard of fiber to my collection. I might even be able to make them each a pair of matching mittens. That realization makes it difficult to justify purchasing anything new no matter how lovely it may be.
So, like all my other waves of interest, I am currently ruthlessly working my way through my supplies. I decided last month to launch into a 24-in-24 project and have included 24 knitted items in the mix. I am absolutely determined to use yarn I already own to meet that goal. Maybe I will make a bunch of hats for the neighbors for the next time our power goes out! And you know, like that teetering to-be-read pile, it is much more fun to dive into it than to leave it untouched!
Readers, how about you? Do you have a teetering to-be-read pile? Do you have a stash of some sort of your own? If so, do you occasionally feel the need to reduce it? How do you go about it if you do?