This is my stash, folks.
This is the entirety of it, save for a few tiny scraps I’ve likely forgotten down the back of the couch.
On the left I have animal fibres; mostly wool and alpaca for the projects I’m working on right now.
And on the right is cotton; used for my ongoing series of animal amigurumi which my Patreon peeps are well familiar with.
The reason I’m showing you this is to help counter a little of the inadequacy I’m sure some of you feel when Social Media dazzles you with the absolutely massive hoards of luxury yarn accumulated by some lucky crafters.
You know the Instagram Reels I’m talking about, right?
“You mean, that’s not a yarn shop?!”
The fact is, collecting yarn can be an expensive hobby completely aside from knitting or crochet.
And without a healthy income most makers can’t afford those kinds of hoards. Most of us buy what we need when we need it and only get as much as we need. Most of us budget and substitute for cheaper yarns and wait til our next pay day to hit “Purchase”.
Most of us use what we have to hand first.
You just don’t see people showing their small stashes on the internet so frequently because there’s no glamour in it. So, I’m showing you mine.
This is how I work; I design the thing, calculate yardage, add a ball (just in case!) and place an order.
I then get the yarn, I make the thing, and when I’m done I have maybe half a ball left over. That half ball eventually finds its way into a separate project, so there’s very little left on my shelves to show for it.
Yarn passes through my work space oftentimes without leaving so much as a footprint. It doesn’t have much time to mingle on its journey.
So, the yarn I have right now on the shelf is either gift yarn, work yarn which will be gobbled up by the design monster in short order, or left-over bits I’m keeping around for secondary projects.
Now, don’t got me wrong here. There is nothing at all wrong with having enough yarn to cover all the major land masses on a medium sized planet. Would that we all could! I gaze at those images with avarice and envy same as everyone else. In quiet moments, I dream of diving into a pit of yarn and doing my best Scrooge McDuck impression. I’d literally never surface.
But for many that’s all that can be; a fantasy. And it’s for them that I’m showing my tiny stash.
If I, a literal professional full-time designer with lots of yarn-dying friends and over 100 patterns in my back catalogue only has this much in my stash right now… well, I hope it helps you feel better about your collection.