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.