Public Revelations

So as I stated a few days ago, I completed my yarn calculations for my 101 goals. I know that some knitters have a large stash. They talk about bins and closets and special ways to stash yarn. After reading about stash and listening to podcasts where the podcasters talk about stash, reading blogs and books where people talk about stash, and seeing stash on Ravelry, I thought that my stash was somewhat on the small/average side. Then I started adding up the yards and grams of yarn in my stash… I have 50,000 yards/16,000 grams of yarn. Now the yardage depends on the yarn you have, and you may have more or less yardage depending on what type of yarn. About 90% of my stash is sock yarn, by my calculations. Yes, 50,000 yards seems like a lot. But really, it takes 300-400 yards to knit socks. And sweaters can use up lots of yarn. I was telling Davis how much I had, and he seemed to feel that this number was mind boggling. So I did some research.

I started on Ravelry, what with it being such an excellent resource. First, I didn’t find an easy way to see who has the largest stash. So I did a small amount of random searching. Most people have around 10 or 20 skeins/balls listed. (You are all in denial by the way.) There are a few people who admit to having 70 or 80 yarns in stash, (Getting there people.) and a smaller number who admit to owning 170 or 180 yarns in their stash. (I can believe that).

Now, there are a few people who admitted publicly that they have over 200 yarns stashed. The largest number that I saw was 244 yarns. (I am sure that there are people who have more. I gave up after a few pages, I am not searching 129 pages of people on Ravelry. I have a life, people!) One person I saw, who admitted to 216 yarns stashed, had mostly lace yarn listed. Lace, that is hundreds of yarn in a skein, and takes forever to knit up. That person probably has hundreds of thousands of yards of yarn. It boggles my mine that she will ever be able to knit it all up. I am on my first laceweight project and I bow in her direction, for I know I do not have the lack of sanity tenacity that she obviously does.

Then I noticed some bloggers sharing their stash statistics on their blogs. (Must be the thing to do this time of year. Take stock and get organized!)

Alcariel just did a stash count for her sock yarns and came up with 124 skeins of sock yarn.(she has paired it down though, and only has 91 now.)

Theresa admitted recently that she has 118, 885 yards of yarn to knit. She plans on knitting

So, my stash is not so outrageous. I have less sock yarn than Alcariel started with, and less yardage than Theresa to knit. (Although I have to say that she either has more time than me to knit, or knits way faster. She plans on knitting 100,000 yards this year! Theresa, you rock!)

Shortly after telling Davis about the state of my stash, he hypothesized that it would take me the rest of my life to knit up! I said it wasn’t that much, but it got me thinking. I’ve been knitting for a little over two years. How much yarn had I knit in that time? Again, referring back to Ravelry, where almost all of my FO’s are displayed, I calculated that I had knit about 7375 yards in my knitterly career. So, at that rate, it will take me almost 7 years to knit my stash.

This is the final conversation I had with Davis:

Me: "But I figure it would actually take a lot less, because I knit faster now. Plus I didn’t knit as much my first year, I actually didn’t knit anything for at least three months after the first Christmas. And I ripped a lot of stuff out. So it might take me 4 or 5 years to knit through my stash. See, it won’t take me the rest of my life!"

Davis: "Well, it depends on how long you live."

Me:…

Davis: "If you only live 2 more years, then you will have 4 years worth of yarn left."

Me:…

Davis: "I’m just saying, accidents happen."

Thanks hubby, I love you too.