Knitting through my stash

Through the years, by means of over-ambitious buying and the thoughtful generosity of other over-ambitious buyers, I have accumulated a very large amount of yarn. My yarn collection (for that is what it is) has slowly taken over the empty storage spaces dedicated to other things, it has crept into areas it does not belong, it is now like sand after going to the beach - found in strange and uncomfortable places in my house. This is not good. Yarn is meant to be used and made into something, not simply protected in cedar chests or plastic bins.

Because of this over-abundance I put a moratorium on yarn buying. This has not been extremely successful.

I have continued to receive yarn gifts and have (occasionally) purchased sweater amounts of yarn (which I turned into a State Fair blue ribbon so it's ok right?) If someone offers me beautiful yarn I can't say no. That would be silly...Perhaps I need a 12 step program. Anyway, my point here is not how to accumulate yarn but how to use it.

I am using it. Slowly. The problem with having a large stash of random yarns is that you need a lot of little projects, or big projects that use a lot of different yarn. Sometimes matching yarn and patterns is not so easy. Sometimes your amounts are off, leading you to buy more yarn to finish projects thereby defeating the purpose of using stash yarn to make things.

Once in a while though, life and the yarn collection meet and make beautiful music. Recently my dishwasher broke. Major bummer. I thought I would go insane or end up divorcing my husband. Neither of those things has come to pass (and my kitchen is actually a little bit cleaner due to the conscious diligence of washing dishes immediately after use because there is no handy machine to do it for me). Initially, when the dishwasher broke, amongst the gut wrenching fear of an avalanche of breakables was the sinking feeling that I did not have any decent wash cloths. My old wash cloths had been used and abused enough to have all been tossed out or otherwise re-purposed. I had a crusty old dish brush but that was only really good for frying pans that I didn't really care about the actual cleanliness of(is that gross?) Then I remembered (EUREKA!) that years ago, in one of my over-ambitious purchases, I had gotten something like six balls of cotton yarn - plain cotton, generally used for dishcloths. So the past couple of weeks I have made it my project to knit it all. Turn it all into dishcloths. I'm knitting it until it's gone, come hell or high water. My dishcloth pile is satisfyingly large and while the work is not extraordinarily challenging it is definitely making life better....yes, I kind of feel like a grandma, but whatever. It's also inspiring! What can I make next from just the yarn I already have? Great things, I'm sure!