Welcome to my journey to reduce the amount of yarn in my stash this year. Check out my previous posts for background information on how I accumulated so much yarn and how I currently have my stash organized.
And welcome to those of you who are joining me on this journey and want to reduce your stash as well.
Today’s post is the start of my actually using up some of my yarn. As you may have gathered from my previous post, I am GREAT at buying yarn, but NOT SO GREAT at using it up in a timely manner.
Now, a search on GOOGLE can provide lots of suggestions from other fiber artists on how they keep their stashes in check. Some are even so disciplined that they don’t have a stash – they only buy what they need, when they need it. Well, great for them, but not helpful to the rest of us!
My brain has thought of many strategies (yay, shower time!), but my procrastination has prevented me from acting on them.
WELL, NO MORE!!
I have decided on 2 strategies, and am happy to say, I have implemented them both! (Ok, it’s only been 2 weeks, but, hey, that’s a good start, right??? Better than nothing!!)
Strategy #1
Pick one of my bags of sorted yarn (see previous post on how I sorted it) and pick a pattern or 2 and use up most of that bag.
So, the first bag of yarn I picked is this pompom yarn from Bernat called ZAPP (got it at the tent sale in Listowel in 2015). I had made a couple of kids hats with it years ago. I have 48 balls of it and am going to use it all up making 3 sizes of hats (infant, toddler and child sizes). Any partial balls left over will be used to make striped hats. As of today, I have finished 8 toddler and 4 baby hats, and have used 12 balls up. Not a bad start, right??
Once this bag of yarn is done, I will move on to another. I’m not necessarily going to use all the yarn up from a particular bag, but at least make a sizable dent in it. However the ZAPP yarn will get all used up – I really never want to work with it again – lol!! I can see why this yarn was discontinued.
Strategy #2
I call this one – Ball a Day. I have made a goal of using up, on average, at least 1 ball of yarn a day. Size of ball doesn’t matter, so if I am tight on time, using up a ball of Bernat Handicrafter cotton to make a dishcloth counts!!!
Progress so far – I started Ball a Day on my most recent trip to my Northern Studio, aka, the cottage, on July 18. I used 3 balls to finish an afghan, and have used 12 balls of the Zapp yarn, for a grand total of…15 balls in 10 days!!
Now that I am back home, with many more distractions (Facebook, I’m looking at you – lol!), I’m going to have to try to keep focused on these strategies. Feel free to write a comment every so often asking how it’s going.
Do you have stash busting strategies that work for you? Leave a comment below – I would love to read what works for you!
Coming up, I will be publishing the kids hat pattern I designed to use up the Zapp yarn. It can be used for any yarn. Subscribe to my newsletter, so you will be notified as soon as I release it. It will be free and published here on my website.
Until next time,
May all your yarn be knot-free.
Sally