My fellow knitter and crocheters will understand my passion for the very essence of our craft - the stash. Without your stash there can be no knitting or crocheting, we would be yarnless, searching endlessly for that perfect wool or that light airy silk. Every time we wanted to make something new we would have to rush out to our local yarn shops. But with our stash at our fingertips, it is all right there, ready and at our disposal the very instant we need a new yarn.
Perhaps it's just me, but I go through these long bouts of boredom that can only be cured by looking up free patterns on the net. It's true; I have spent more hours than I care to admit to over the past year looking up free patterns. Most of the time, this isn't done during the day when my local yarn shop is open (or even on the days when it's open), it's done in the evening, or if I'm suffering from a bout of insomnia, in the wee hours of the morning. If I didn't have my trusty stash by my side, where would I be when I found the perfect little project that I just had to start at two am on a Monday morning?
That being said, my stash isn't out of control (or at least it isn't yet). This year I participated in Flash Your Stash 2006. Not only did I get to show off what I had accumulated, but I also got to see what other people had stored away in their boxes, trunks, bags, and rooms. Yes, rooms. I was awestruck when I saw people with whole rooms dedicated to their marvelous stash (and some of them so organized I thought it was a yarn shop).
Currently all my yarn lives in one of those Tupperware containers, you know the ones; they're about three feet high, two feet wide and have three drawers. That's where my yarn lives. Don't get me wrong, it's pretty snug in there, but to imagine having a whole room full of yarn - it just blows my mind. I'm in no way chastising those who have accomplished this level of yarn-ownership; I'm saying the exact opposite. I'm in awe and envious. I can only imagine the owners spinning through their rooms like Mary Tyler Moore on a busy city street, with yarn at their very fingertips.
Or perhaps I'm getting a little carried away, but how could any serious knitter or crocheter not when they see that much yarn? It's a little ambitious for me to say that I hope to have this much yarn someday, but I'll go ahead and say it anyway. I want to sit in my own room (but by then it'll be called a studio) nestled in between the merinos and the arans, the cotton and the silks, the alpacas and the angoras, perhaps even a little possum and qiviut. When I want to make a sweater I won't have to shop around, and waste countless hours comparing and deciding, because I'll already have my supplies right there at my waiting.
© Kelly Gilliam, text and images. Reproduction without permission is prohibited
