Pictures of Stash

Flash Your Stash Day, 2006!

Here we go: this is my yarn stash, except for two skeins of sari silk.


Compared to some I've seen, it is quite a reasonable amount. (However, this does not include my fabric stash. But don't tell anyone.) I think the Next Generation might have got some odd balls in their bedrooms, which may be returned at some point, but possibly not.

No, I'm not going to open up the boxes today, so tough.

The blue box contains mostly Stuff I Bought. In my defence, I have been knitting since I was seven, so I've had decades to Buy Stuff. The yellow box is over half Stash Dumping. Stash Dumping is related to Stash Diving, in the following way

Stash Diving

You look through someone else's stash, going "ohhh, ahhh, oh that's lovely" and they say "take it", and you go home with some beautiful new yarn, and make lots of plans for what you will do with it all.

Stash Dumping

Someone else looks through their own stash and gives you bits of it, and you go home thinking "what am I going to do with this", and sometimes even "I don't want this horrible yarn, what can I do with it?".

Karma

A teenager Stash Dives in the Previous Generation's stashes, grows up, and gets Stash Dumped by the Previous Generation, although sometimes with things that have been dumped on them.

The two brown baskets on the yellow box contain everything needed for my main WIPs, a V-neck jumper for the Next Generation, and a V-necked jumper for me. I don't have a pattern. I don't remember making a V-neck before. Hmmmmm. Anyone else see a potential problem here?

However, they are not full of stash: when I take the yarn out, you find this in the front basket:


Behind them on the yellow box is my oddments bag. It isn't full. The little skeins on the blue box should be in there as well.

On top of the pile on the blue box, is a ziplock bag containing lengths of yarn from the news:rec.crafts.textile.yarn swops. Each month you sign up, you send five 4m lengths of yarn to your partner, and they send five 4m length of yarn back to you.

Underneath is a pack of Jamieson's which was bought at Ally Pally: it was half price, and I was told that it was on sale because the dye had come out wrong, and didn't match their shade cards. I think it's a lovely colour. The pack of Sirdar Denim Tweed came from a local shop, and was also massively reduced.

The blue bag contains enough aran wool to make a jumper. But that leads us on to

Ancient Stash

The Aran come from a shop in the Yorkshire Dales, bought for me by my mother when I still lived at home. My intention was to design myself an authentic aran jumper, and every so often I thought about it. Eventually I realised I didn't actually want that style of jumper, and the project was shelved. I don't know for certain what I will do with it.

This is my oddments bag:


These are the oldest things in my oddments bag:


The little blue ball in the bottom left of the picture has been in my stash the longest. It was in a basket I bought at a Scout jumble sale, I was perhaps ten years old. I occasionally use a tiny bit of it.

The two green Country Style leftovers are from a batwing jumper I knitted. There was a diagonal line from the waist to the opposite shoulder, and underneath the line was the tweed effect, and above the line was the plain green.

The green yarn and the red yarn, with the white specks, are French, possibly Pengouin. They were bought to make a jumper for my cousin's child.

The red and the blue ball are Patricia Robert's own brand, bought from her shop in Covent Garden. I used them to make a pair of blue gloves with a knitted red bow.

Also from the bag:

Stash Modern:

These four balls of wool are all I've bought this year.

The only yarn I bought between Ally Pally and the New Year was a special offer of a pack of Country Style, being used for one of the V-necks I am knitting. Aren't I virtuous?