Old Yarn

After listening to Stash and Burn last week I found myself thinking about ‘old yarn’. How old was the yarn in my stash? Should I adopt a principle of getting rid of anything that’s been there for, say, a year? Or two? I decided to open my stash spreadsheet and add a ‘date aquired’ column, going through my blog to work out which month of which year each yarn had entered the stash.

I figured anything I got before the blog started was ‘old yarn’. That meant it had remained in my stash for over two years. Leftovers didn’t count, though. This is what qualified:

Not much, really. Two lots of laceweight (don’t like knitting lace, but the single skein is too beautiful to get rid of), one skein of ‘weavers ends’ bought in the UK (never did work out what to make out of it), some Regia sock yarn from back when self-striping yarns first appeared (but I still mean to knit it), some Cleckheaton Country 12ply in brown probably from the 70s (vintage yarn!) and three balls of Corriedale Clip (intended to felt but changed my mind because it’s too nice).

It turned out that one of my wips is also using up ‘old yarn’ – I’m using another ball of Regia, bought at the same time as the one above, for the Tilty Socks.

So am I going to set myself a Using Up Old Yarn challenge?

Naaaah. Turns out there’s not a lot of ‘old yarn’ in my stash, and what I’ve got I’m happy to leave until the right project comes along for it. But looking at my stash in this way reassured me that I’m either getting around to knitting most of the yarn I buy within two or so years of buying it, or else I’m giving away what I don’t want. When I remember that the reason I embraced Knit From Your Stash was to make room to liven up the stash with fresh, exciting new yarn, I reckon I’ve done well!

2 thoughts on “Old Yarn

  1. I had never thought of dating my wool (so to speak!!) I don’t think mine is very old, since I left work, so 7 years at the most. I don’t think that’s old. Mind you, it’s all relative, I reckon the older you get,the younger your stash seems!!! The Corriedale Clip is very pretty!! Nice colours.

  2. I’ve got some yarn which my mum bequeathed me – she started knitting it in the 50s…about half of my yarn is over 10 years old, so I reckon you’re doing really well and I can only aspire!

Comments are closed.