Last week I cast caution to the winds, jumped into my car with my BKB (Best Knitting Bud) Deb, and headed north to the Interweave Yarn Fest in Loveland, Colorado. It was a beautiful day and we were looking forward to our adventure. I brought some skeins of yarn that needed matching, a couple of patterns, a cocky attitude and an absolute conviction that I wouldn’t buy even one skein of yarn that I couldn’t use this year.
Here’s the background on my yarn stash: I’m working on reducing the stash this year by at least 50 skeins. As I headed up towards Loveland I was lulled into a false sense of progress as I had just totaled my knitting efforts and knew that I was on a great pace to reach my goals: 21 skeins of yarn had already been knitted out of the stash. I could afford to splurge a little, right? I am a knitting machine and I will pull off this resolution with one knitting hand behind my back. No problems!!

Right. No plan ever survived contact with a knitting marketplace. After cruising and shopping the marketplace at Yarn Fest, Deb and I scooted on up to Fort Collins to visit My Sister Knits, a favorite LYS. By the end of the day I had bought 11 new skeins of yarn.


So, I bought 7 skeins of yarn with a definite projects in mind for them. The other 4 are more of a “I need to buy these now or I will regret it later” type purchases. I mean, look at that mohair!! I will combine it with another yarn and produce a fabulous cowl or shawlette that will still be using up yarn from the stash. That’s good, right?
The last three yarns will become a three-color shawl of some type. Something beautiful that won’t count towards depleting the stash, but will be worth the knitting anyway. Something that I will treasure. (My Precious! sang in my mind as I grabbed the yarns to my chest… I just ignored the look that Deb shot my way as I tucked the yarn into my basket and skipped to the checkout counter…I don’t need an intervention. Really, I don’t. Move along, now. ) I wonder if I can get the mohair involved somehow? The colors all go together. Sometimes it is best to just go with the serendipity. I wonder if I can find more of that mohair?
Do you see how my stash got into such a state in the first place?

All in all, I came home with 11 skeins of yarn and I suddenly have a stash removal total of only 10 skeins. Well, that is less than optimal… Still, not impossible to overcome if I buckle down and get to work on my projects. I’m all fired up again and casting on like crazy. Socks, sweaters, shawls… I am on it!
Have a great (knitting) weekend, everyone.