2011....it will be here before you know it. As this year closes & I'm suddenly doing last minute Christmas knitting AGAIN (don't I say every single year that I'm not going to do this????) Actually, I'm more looking at the yarn to knit those presents & not doing it. I can't help but look forward to my goals for next year. Lately I have been doing a bit of "have to" knitting - baby gifts, Christmas presents, fast last minute stuff. Two nights ago I decided that I needed an easy project out of nice yarn for ME & I went in my yarn room and wound some Buffalo Gold Buffboo (discontinued, sorry).
I hear a lot of talk about the
Buffalo Gold & to me it always seems like yarn that you stash & don't use because it's so nice. Which is totally ridiculous, I know. It's also pretty pricey stuff. It suddenly occurred to me that I have two skeins of buffalo yarn and, well, I didn't buy either one of them. I traded a friend for one & then last year I won a skein at the
DFW Fiber Fest. How cool is that? In keeping with last year's goal of not saving the nice yarn for the Pope, I cast on a
One Row Scarf. It's so soft & nice that I swear, I don't know what to do with myself. It's little yarn on little-ish needles, so it's going to take a while. But what the heck, I knit every day & I only have a pile of projects on the needles so what's one more????
Wow - that was quite a tangent. Here's what I'm thinking for 2011. I figured out how much yarn I bought this year. Don't do that unless you want a huge shock. HUGE.SHOCK. I'm not revealing any true confessions here, but it was more than I thought. So I'm saying it. 2011 is going to be a stashdown year. It has to be. I can sell or knit, but Stashdown here we come. I've heard some talk that it's "trendy" to stashdown....I'm not sure if I believe that. I think every year there is a movement for people to consume less, declutter, lose weight, stop spending, save money, etc, etc. I usually don't follow that bandwagon because for the most part I think you are just setting yourself up for failure. I remember hearing a speaker once say to pick ONE thing to change. If you say you are going to change everything about your life, you are just fooling yourself. It is possible, but it takes more self restraint than most people can take all at once. I know I can't do it & I'm not even going to try. I've lost about 30 pounds this year & I can tell you, it has mostly come from very small changes, not huge behavioral differences. I believe this in most areas of my life & that's where I am. But honestly, the stash is out of control. I have a huge yarn cabinet & it's busting at the seams. I can't get more yarn in it which is causing some overflow. That is RIDICULOUS. And frankly, if I knit up every bit of this yarn, what in the heck am I going to do with all of those knitted goods???? Well, here is my plan:
* Gift knit ahead. This year I've had several last minutes wishes for knitted gifts. I figure if over the year I knit some scarves, shawls, baby things, hat/scarf sets, etc. that I don't claim mental ownership of, I can gift randomly. I have a few people that I wish I could just give them a scarf when they admire mine (if not the one off my neck!) and there is no reason that I can't do that. I really do love scarf knitting & I love appreciative recipients. Knitted gift giving does take a little forethought though, and by the time I think of someone to give something to, it's usually too late. In the past I have thought that I need to knit for that person specifically, and in some cases I still believe that. For the most part, though, I think a random nice person that I want to give a scarf or something to won't care if I carefully picked out that yarn & pattern for them or not. And really, how many brown & pink scarves can I wear??? (my yarn color of choice for years!)
* Get rid of some of this sock yarn! I blame 2007. And 2008. I got in the horrible habit of snatching up the new latest-and-greatest-hard-to-get-OMG-pretty-and-it-is-only-$20 sock yarn craze. That gets out of hand very very very quickly. And I did it for a couple of years. To be honest, the yarn is still pretty but no one cares about it anymore. For example: I fought tooth & nail catching Yarn Pirate updates until I finally scored some Culture Club.
I still love it dearly, but seriously, try swapping it for the new "latest & greatest" & see what happens. No one cares anymore! I try to tell myself these days when the popular yarn posts & I get caught up in the craze. I'm pretty good about it too though I still find it hard to resist
Wollmeise (I did last week though, YAY me!). So I'm going to knit some up and/or sell some. Incidentally, if you'd like your own skein of fabulous Yarn Pirate Culture Club it's very easily available on Ravelry destash for...you guessed it, about $20. You can't have mine because I still hoard it like it is the rarest yarn on the planet. Will I knit it up this year?
* WIP (Works in Progress). Well, I did this in 2010,
remember? I'm happy to report that I started with 16 projects, finished 6, frogged 5, and that leaves FIVE previous projects that are still floating around out there. Only 5 WIPs, Tasha? Bwhahahahaha. Make that 18. That's what I did this year, start a bunch of crap that I didn't finish! It looks like a new WIP post is in order. Really, though, this will eliminate a lot of my stash yardage quickly. Well, more quickly than starting stuff from scratch, anyway. In all fairness, 2 of those are long term blankets & one was on the needles when I did that last post but I didn't count it....(I'm going to stop justifying now). I do need a frog or finish intervention, though.
* $50 per month limit on knitting stuff for 1st quarter 2011. I can't do a no-buy. I just can't do it. I like my yarn, I like my knitting stuff. Sometimes I need yarn to finish something or to add to something I have or just because it's pretty. Or I want to buy a pattern. Or needles. And April brings DFW Fiber Fest & that means I can buy direct from a variety of oh so great vendors. I can limit it in for a few months, though, and then reassess the situation.
* Look at my existing yarn in a new way & stop trying to make it into the project I loved 4 years ago.
* Knit stuff that I love. Destash the rest.
* Stealing this from Susan-from-Athens on Ravelry: "enjoy what I have and admire what others have without necessarily coveting some of my own." That woman is smart.
What are your goals for 2011? Do you have any? Will you be buying up a ton of yarn? Can I watch?
PS - I will talk about my trip to Paris at some point. I'm still processing it in a lot of ways. Here is one shot for you:
Yes, I found an alpaca. In Paris. Go figure. And since that wasn't very Paris-y:
