confessions of a yarn hoarder

I love yarn. I love the way it feels, the way it smells, the way it knits up. I love the sheen of silk, the scritchyness of wool, the drape and softness of alpaca. And color. Oh lord, do I love color.

I think I started hoarding yarn after I got a steady-paying job. Yes, my big fat paycheck as an editor (or, at least what I thought was a big fat paycheck) seemed so big that it could buy all the yarn in the world. And buy I did.

Silk/wool blend in lavender that was so squooshy-soft I could hardly bear it?

Yes.

Deep, luscious semi-solid violet wool/silk laceweight in a 900-yard hank?

Hell yes.

Handmaiden Sea Silk in a color that I would probably never wear?

Um, yes to that, too.

Anything and everything that caught my fancy, that tugged at my knitting heartstrings--off the shelf and into my embrace it did go. Once purchased, I would take my new yarn home, settle down with Ravelry, and begin hunting for the perfect project for my new prize, something that would use up as much yardage as possible, would show off the color/sheen/thick and thin texture most prominently, something that I could imagine as a finished product.

The problem with searching for perfection is that you never do really find it; I would make plans to knit a shawl/sweater/pair of mitts and then find something even more enticing. I would edit and re-edit my queue. I would search with ultra-specific filters: 300-327 yards, fingering weight ONLY, using the stranded colorwork technique. Then sulk when I couldn't find a pattern that remotely fit my preferences for X skein of yarn. As you can imagine, I wasn't getting much actual knitting done.

It had to stop. So, when January 1 rolled around, I didn't resolve to lose weight or go to bed earlier, as many of us do. I resolved to stop being a yarn hoarder. For the next half of the year, with only a few exceptions, I would simply not be allowed to buy a skein of yarn. To some, it may not sound like a very long time, but I was thinking in baby steps, and knew that if I had made it an entire year, I would have crumbled for cashmere within the first week.

More importantly, this resolution would require me to--gasp!--knit from my stash. For gifts, for myself, it didn't matter. I would not pay a dollar for yarn until after June.

Today, I moved my stash from the bunny room to my room. (Let's face it; storing fiber next to bunnies with shedding tendencies wasn't the brightest idea I've ever had.) And as I went through it, dusting it off and picking out bits of hay from the skeins, something magical started to happen. I rediscovered yarn I had forgotten about. I marveled over skeins that had been long-lost in the bottom of the drawer. I fell in love all over again. It struck me that I didn't need to buy yarn to love it; that I was happy with what I already had.

I am allowing myself one skein of yarn while I'm in Arizona in February (as it's my tradition to buy yarn as a souvenir on my trips) and anyone is welcome to give me yarn as a gift (because I really don't have control over that, do I?) but otherwise, no buying, no hoarding.

Will I make it until June? Or will I wither away from yarn starvation? I'll keep you posted!