new year, new you, new (yarn) diet!

How many of you have heard of yarn diets?  At the beginning of each year, crafters talk about yarn diets because stashes have got out of hand and need some trimming.    
As yarn shop owners ‘Yarn diet’ is a term we never want to hear.   We prefer ‘yarn management’ because having an unmanaged stash is a drag.  It stifles creativity as it sits there in your figurative peripheral vision, getting in the way of your hobby.  We all know the feeling – inspired to make something but feel we should use what we have in spite of the fact that most of it is left-overs.  It’s a bit like wanting to make a pavlova with the remains of Christmas dinner – you need different ingredients or the finished dish will be bubble and squeak!

So if the size of your stash is upsetting you, here are our ten top tips to slim it down:

1. Don’t bother!   Like all other diets the yarn diet is doomed to failure and increased stash in the end!

Sorry, that’s a bit negative.  Here are the real ten top tips for managing your stash:

1. Create three (large) spaces and label them KEEP, DISCARD, UNSURE.
2. Sort your stash into piles of yarn weights (dk, 4-ply etc) and within those piles into colours.  You can now really see what you have.
3. Take a photograph for posterity.
4. Be honest, have you found yarns that you are really never going to use – if the answer is yes, start the discard pile.
5. Divide the rest of the yarn into KEEP AND UNSURE.
6. This step is where having the yarn in different weight categories helps.  Most of us have a list of projects we would like to make (a pile of patterns or a Ravelry queue).  Match KEEP yarn to projects.  You might also find that UNSURE yarns can be used here too.  Bag yarn with a pattern or name thus transforming it into a project and miraculously removing it from stash.  You now have a queue of items to make.
7. What is left?  Are there oddments of yarn that you have kept for an imaginary fairisle which remains stubbornly imaginary?   Add to Discard pile.
8. Check out online for stashbuster projects (Ravelry or just google).  There are loads you could make like log-cabin blankets, ripple blankets, helical knitting projects.  Granny Square crochet.  Allocate your yarns and again add to your project queue.  If you don’t like stashbuster projects like these, be honest with yourself and discard instead.
9. Add anything that is left to the Discard pile.
10. Take a photograph for posterity!

You now have an organised store of potential projects which you can make over the coming year (or millennia).  If you are very focussed you will make them before buying more yarn.  You could alternate queued projects with new purchases.  Wahtever you do, you now have a managed craft instead of an unmanaged stash.  Be proud of yourself!
 
Footnote:
Now, of course, by ‘discard’, we don’t mean ‘throw away’.  Here’s what you can do with your spare yarn.

• Swap it with yarny friends or just gift it to one of them (but only if it is something you are sure they would use -- increasing someone else’s stash to decrease your own is just mean!).
• Donate to charity crafting groups
• Donate to your local school
• Take to charity shop

---