Color

Again I would like to see all knitted at 50% or higher

(sad table because my pretty one won't play with blogger and I couldn't stand the though of throwing away the time I spent collecting the data, again)

Color........total....... knitted.................% project.........% yardage
Black..........14............. 7..........................50%........................46%
Blue ...........44...........21..........................48%........................41%
Brown........26...........11...........................34%........................27%
Gray.............8............5............................45%.......................35%
Green.........15............8............................35%.......................30%
Natural........4............1.............................25%........................8%
Orange........4............4...........................100%....................100%
Pink...........32..........18.............................56%......................56%
Purple........27............9............................30%......................33%
Red............29...........11............................38%......................24%
Taupe..........6.............4............................67%......................86%
Teal............11.............4............................36%......................23%
White.........19.............7............................37%......................46%
Yellow.........6.............2............................33%......................27%


Notice the colors I don’t like such as Orange and Taupe have a high knitted percentage. That’s because I only buy and knit them as gifts and as such they get finished. Still 4 orange projects might be 4 too many.

Take a look at purple. I like buying purple but it seems I don’t like knitting purple. Maybe I should hold off buying more until I come to terms with that. Same with brown. I need to note that the only brown in my stash is chocolate brown.

However, blue and pink I can hardly buy fast enough. Those two have the highest number both bought and knitted.

The projects I have in my stash right now.

I have yarn to knit:

46 Socks
3 Baby Sweaters
23 Sweaters
3 Hats
15 Mittens
14 Short Sleeve Tops
6 Lace
0 Other
45 single skeins
total 155

I have enough projects to keep me busy a while. But looking at the numbers there is more to it than that. I will probably never knit more than 8 adult sweaters in a year so with 3 years worth on hand I don’t need to buy any more anytime soon. Same for mittens.

I am woefully short on baby sweater yarn. I either need to start knitting short sleeved tops instead or to use that yarn for baby sweaters.

Socks are holding up well. There is no desperate need for them but I don’t have too many either.

Hat yarn looks pretty thin on the ground but I can use single skeins for them in a pinch.

Finally lace, No more lace yarn. At one lace project every eight years I have enough to last me for the next 48 years. Unless it’s Handmaiden Sea Silk, because that yarn’s purpose is to just exist in the stash. It’s so wonderful it never needs to be knitted.

So what do I knit?

2006
socks 5
baby sweaters 4
sweaters 3
hats 1
mittens 1
other 4
total 18

2007
socks 11
baby sweaters 7
sweaters 7
hats 5
mittens 7
other 8
total 45

2008
socks 19
baby sweaters 8
sweaters 6
hats 10
mittens 1
short sleeve top 1
other 14
total 59

These numbers are right but they don’t match the spread sheet exactly because of the single skeins of yarn. Sometimes 1 skein will make 2 or 3 items and other times I will take several singles skeins and combine them into one project.

65 entries, really?

Yes, really.

I was working within walking distance of not one, but two, knitting stores. It’s amazing I didn’t buy more. Notice the 18 knitted items and then the jump the next year. That is the difference of working 50 hours a week, having internet at home, and living in Chicago verses now with so much less going on. I used to only knit at my lunch break and while watching hours of Adult Swim on Saturday nights and that is all. Oh, and on the train when I made trips to the Art Institute.

Here is how I got it all.

I had pretty little tables breaking down each category into projects but blogger won't read them. Still, here is the overview. I am sad about the pretty tables.

2006
4 gifts, 0 trade, 57 bought, 4 handspun
____________________________________________________
total 65



2007
6 gift, 4 trade, 51 bought, 3 handspun
____________________________________________________
total 64



2008
6 gift, 10 trade, 35 bought, 4 handspun
___________________________________________________________
total 55



2009
4 gift, 18 trade, 0 bought, 2 handspun
_______________________________________________________________
total 24

I have been able to keep building my stash even when money is tight. Through trading on line and buying big at big sales I have been able to keep acquiring yarn for knitting at pretty much the same rate as when I had yarn money.

However I am limited on the brands I can get or I sometimes I have to settle on colors. I really appreciate the stash I built in 2006 when I bought exactly what I wanted. It is the quality rather than the quantity of that year that I appreciate.

Now how did I get such a large stash?

And do I really buy it faster than I knit?

2006
65 Entries into the stash
18 Knitted
28%

2007
64 Entries into the stash
40 Knitted
63%

2008
55 Entries into the stash
54 Knitted
98%

That’s a sum total of 61% knitted. That’s more than 50%...

Stash

I have been thinking about my stash a lot lately. I will admit it out loud that I keep it all in a spread sheet and that the spread sheet gives me much joy. My only regret is that I didn’t start my spread sheet until my 5th year of knitting. When I finally started I had a stash of 53 entries; I had enough yarn to knit 12 sweaters, 11 baby sweaters, 3 pairs of mittens, 4 pairs of socks, the other 23 entries were single skeins, some left over from finished projects but most bought because they were pretty.

However, for the first 5 years I kept lazy notes about what I had knit. I know that 5 years I had knit almost 30 pairs of socks, 5 sweaters, 1 lace shawl, a shrug, a felted bag, untold number of felted mittens, and 5 baby sweaters. But I knit a little more than that. There was the Christmas that everyone I knew got a hat and so much more that got lost along the way.

The point being is now when I use my spread sheet the numbers are only for the last 3 years and yet I am counting the stash I built in the 5 years before. That strikes me as unfair.

So when I do the math and I say I have knitted 42% of my purchases that number just isn’t right. Not really. Not absolutely, and that is an irritant for me. Still, I am glad to have the detailed spreadsheet since then.

So with that disclaimer given and the realization that some is lost to time let me start in on my statistics.

Total Stash since I started keeping records in late 2005
128203 yards
52354 grams
267 projects

I have knitted in the last 3 years
48292 yards
20647 grams
112 projects

On hand right now
79911 yards
31707 grams
155 projects

So that means I have knitted
37.67% of the yards
39.44% of the weight
42% of the projects

My goal is to hit 50% in any one of those categories before buying more yarn. I love my stash but it seems reasonable to expect myself to knit at least half of the yarn I buy.

Yarn in Trade

It's not Lite Lopi but it is yarn. I traded 2 nice drop spindles, alpaca, and silk spinning fibers.



It's so much yarn it wouldn't fit into the camera frame. I'm going to knit socks and color stranded mittens. The lace mohair will become legwarmers. The worsted weight wool/silk will be gloves if it's not too thick. Lots of nice knitting. I had to cast on a few projects to make room for it in the stash dresser but it all fits.