While I was waiting for the Addi knitting machines to arrive I looked in my stash for yarns suitable to knit on them. I found seventeen batches of 8 or 10 ply wool or alpaca yarn, half of which I bought in the last year or two. I didn’t count the Bendigo cotton 8ply since, when I gave it a try on a machine, it was a little thin – a 10ply cotton would be better.

Of these seventeen yarns, none were in batches large enough to make a garment. I could combine some, as I’d done with the Green Lines Jacket, but even then I wouldn’t have enough to make anything larger than a vest – and I already have plenty of those.

So what to do? Well, I’m intending to go to the Bendy Show this year. There’s no fun in going but not buying anything. Perhaps garment-sized batches of yarn in weights to use on the circular machines could be something to keep an eye out for. After all, making the Green Lines Jacket and the pieces of another garment must have given me some room in the stash, right?

Er… not really.

It seems my stash has got a little out of control again. A few years back I got it down to ten kilos. Is now four times that weight. I’ve been storing cones and packets of yarn on top of cupboards and squeezed in with my sewing machines.

How did it grow so much so quickly? To work it out, I dragged all the cone yarn into the kitchen because there did seem to be a LOT of it. Sure enough, I had enough to cover our 8-seater dining table. Most of it I’ve picked up for a bargain or from other people’s stash bust. I’ve not been setting out to buy cone yarn, just accumulating whatever came along.

Over the next night I thought about what I had. Some of the yarn is good, some of it okay, some not so great. Life is too short to work with yarn you don’t like. I considered what I could make with it, whether for me or for someone else or for charity. Later I remembered the third way to look at it: what could I learn while using it?

So the next day I brought the rest of my stash out. I divided it first into cones and skeins/balls, then by fibre type, then by weight, then by purpose (eg. sock yarn). My stash is supposed to fill only the 16 tubs I have. They come in two sizes, and I decided to put most of the cones into the larger and most of the skein/balls into the smaller. Then I wrote two lists for each tub: one of potential projects, one of what I could learn making them.

All through this I culled yarn that I either didn’t like, or the project I had in mind didn’t thrill me (usually because it’s only purpose was to use up the yarn) and nothing else came to mind. I removed about one large tub’s worth of yarn overall.

Of course, it always turns out that some of the culled yarns look great together.

I told myself I wasn’t allowed to put them back in the stash. If I was going to weave them I had to at least wind the warp for something right now. (More on this later.)

Despite all this, I still couldn’t fit all my stash into the tubs. The problem wasn’t cones, but skeins/balls. To solve that I took a few batches out to knit up straight away on the circular knitting machines, which left me with only sock yarn ‘scraps’ not fitting.

Can you see room for new yarn? Me neither.

Time to get serious. I was going to have to cull harder, knit/weave really fast for the next month, or not buy anything at the Bendy Show. Since the latter was inconceivable, that left the first two.

After updating my stash spreadsheet the total was down to around 36 kilos. I decided it needed to get down to 35 kilos before I was allowed to buy more yarn. I culled what I considered a bad purchase (went to a friend knitting charity blanket squares) then warped up the knitters loom with another yarn. Still 600 grams over. Then I remembered that cotton is heavier than wool, so I started winding a warp for a baby blanket. Stash total = 34719 grams! Yessss!

(Better not weave too fast, though. Once a project is finished, I weigh the leftovers and put them back on the spreadsheet, and that might nudge it over 35 kilos again.)

I’ve since removed another 400 grams for a machine knit blanket. I reckon I have one small tub’s worth of space free, which isn’t a lot. Still, the stash is well organised now. And I have plans for most of it. All I need now is inspiration and time.

And maybe a ban on accumulating bargain or free cones of yarn for a while.