I often hear people say "I (can't, won't, shouldn't) buy any more yarn because I already have too much". Personally, I will never have enough yarn because it is something that sparks my imagination and it doesn't have an expiration date. But I thought it might be a good exercise to see what one might do to work on that overabundance of stash.
I don't know about anybody else but I tend to sort my stash by color. Not very scientific, I know, but it is what appeals to my inner child. When I want to take things out to play with them, I always go by color first, then I fine tune it (gauge, fiber content, etc....). So in planning a stash buster project the first thing I did was to pull out a storage bin in a color that was calling me-namely pinks/fuchsias/purples and, of course, greens.
Green is a basic to me, it goes with everything. First I found several skeins of the solid lavender then I added four partial skeins of coordinating novelties (sorry, guys, but I still like my texture and bling!).
These are all on the bulky side and I found I had around 600 yds combined total so next I needed to decide what kind of project I wanted to make with them. Something quick and Summery since the fibers are all cotton and synthetic blends and, well, it is that time of year, so I searched my ever growing queue of favs on Ravelry and came up with the Ribbed Lace Bolero.
Perfect! It called for a bulky weight, is a basic adaptable shape, a warm weather project and although I had more yarn than it called for, I knew I would be upsizing it so that was all to the good. I swatched (yes, I do that!) and decided that I wanted to go up on the needle sizes so settled on #9 & #11. I did the ribbing in the smooth yarn then began the lace pattern st using the remainder of the first skein from the ribbing and incorporating the novelties. The big question here was how to use them. I could have made a Magic Ball but didn't really want to put that much work into it. I could do random stripes, Fibonacci stripes or.......??? but finally decided to just work 1 row stripes using 3 different yarns. The beauty of this technique is that once you have all 3 joined, you don't have to think about it; when you get to the end of the row, the next color is sitting there waiting to be used. It blends the fibers and makes a very eclectic fabric. I also decided that when I ran out of one yarn, I was just going to tie the next one on and keep going even if it was in the middle of the row. No reason to wait to the end, do you think?
I don't really see that in the overall scheme of things
that it made much difference and how liberating is it to be able to use every last morsel of a skein up? I luv, luv, luv it!! And, since it is a bulky knit, before I knew it, Presto, Chango and Bob's Your Uncle!! I had a lovely, drapey shrug that used up 6 skeins of stash yarn.
Now, that is what I call prime stash busting !! Anyone want to try it?
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