My Stash Runneth Over

Last December, I wrote about my realization that I had finally achieved Stash Acquisition Beyond Life Expectancy (S.A.B.L.E.). Although I don't believe in diets, for food or yarn, because I believe that the forbidden is oh-so-much-more-enticing--and therefore declaring anything forbidden is counterproductive--I did mention my goal of reducing the stash a bit through a combination of destashing and knitting from stash.

I made some impressive strides in that general direction. I put some of my yarn up on Ravelry, with the intention of offering it for sale. That got a tad overwhelming, and after an entire day of photographing and cataloging, I had to take a little break...which is now dragging into its eight month.

I successfully undertook the Great Giant Granny Square Scrapghan Challenge of 2009, which used up an impressive 10 pounds of stash yarn and netted me a blanket big enough to work as a car cozy.

I even cut waaaaay back on my yarn buying from WEBS and Little Knits and Smileys, and all the other pushers--I mean sellers--online. This reduction may have been offset slightly by a corresponding increase in purchases from Rav destashers--but come on, how can anyone resist those deals?

Last December, the stash closet looked like this:


This morning when I decided to pull a few single balls of yarn from the stash closet for an afghan square swap I'm taking part in, I was astounded to see this:

Is it me, or did I somehow acquire even MORE yarn in past eight months?

This does not appear to be an improvement.

Normally, I don't mind yarn piling up. I love yarn. It makes me happy. It inspires me. And as habits go, it's pretty benign. But when the yarn becomes a public safety hazard, it's clearly time to take action.

Destash? No. We've already established that destashing does not work for me. Yarn diet? Ditto.

But I had to make a pilgrimage to CostCo today (on a Sunday--save me!), and I happened across these nifty storage boxes at three for fifteen bucks:

I bought two sets. I debated buying more, but my husband was with me, and I didn't want to call attention to the full extent of the yarn issue--since I like to allow for a little plausible deniability on my part, and a little self-delusion on his part--so I kept it to just the two. Even that drew a little more negative attention than I really wanted, but I moved swiftly to the alcohol aisle and defused the situation with a little creative redirection.

Once safely home and closed up in the guest room, I dragged out everything from the floor of the closet. There was a lot. No pictures, because my husband does sometimes read the blog, and, well, see above re: plausible deniability.

After an hour of sorting and packing, I achieved this:

Okay, so I still have more yarn than I can feasibly knit in my natural lifetime.

But at least now I know what I have.

Small victories, right?