The Stash

Do not discourage your child from hoarding, if they have a taste for it;
whoever lays up his penny rather than part with it for a cake,
at least is not the slave of a gross appetite;
and shows beside a preference, always to be esteeemed, for the future.
-Samuel Johnson

I'm following along on the Stash Knit Down 2008 over at Ravelry (echoing my fellow knitbloggers when I ponder - how did we ever live without it?), so you may be seeing a few progress reports popping up. Especially given today's onset of the January Challenge - to knit a mile of yarn. Yup, 1760 yards of yarn. Good thing I'm knitting an enormous sportweight sweater!

In order to follow progress, it's important to see where we're starting. January 1, 2008 found me with what I believe to be my highest yarn total ever. (Aided considerably by the end-of-December purchases for Salt Lake City and the Manos Four Seasons Throw. Excuses notwithstanding, these were my totals:

Skeins: 602.25
Yards: 118,885
Miles: 67.5

A few clarifications - a skein in my spreadsheet can be 25g of bulky something or a huge cone of laceweight. It, in general, includes only full skeins. The big basket of sock leftovers, or the bigger basket of other leftovers, aren't generally counted, although I do tally partial skeins when they are part of a lot (e.g. 3.5 skeins of Cascade 220 leftover from Am Kamin).

The goals: A little modest stash reduction. Most of my stash I love and plan to knit. Some of it I'd passively part with on my Ravelry page. And a few things I'd actively like to get rid of (maybe 5-10 skeins, not much). Mostly I would just be comfortable with a smaller stash, so I feel less guilty buying yarn. Most of my stash - believe it or not - is not sweater quantities of yarn. Lots of laceweight, lots of sock yarn, lots of small lots of things. So everytime I want to make a sweater I have to buy yarn. For the most part, I like this because I buy the right yarn for the sweater, but then the stash goes unknit. Hence, Knit Down the Stash.

The goals, The numbers: By December 31, 2008, I'm aiming for

Skeins: <500
Yards: <100,000

That doesn't sound too hard, except that there are several impending yarn purchases for my 2008: Twelve Projects plans. Sweater projects. The good news? I've already made some progress:

Skeins: 597.25
Yards: 118, 544

Yesterday I returned some yarn for the first time ever, some Manos that didn't make the cut for the throw. I returned 2 skeins in exchange for 3 of Cascade 220, so I'm now up in both skeins and yardage from the transaction, but since I have near-plans for the Cascade and none for the Manos, I get points for increasing the usability of the stash.