Stash-specific yarn dieting and the Sweet Spot of Turnover

Revved up to write with nothing to say.  It’s like being all dressed up with nowhere to go, except it’s the blogger’s version of it.

I thought about writing about how my “yarn diet” this month had helped me to knit through a pretty substantial amount of yarn over the last two weeks, seeing as how my Hawaiian Diamonds (rav link) top is about half finished… which is a pretty awesome feat, but I have to admit that I feel sort of wrong writing about a yarn diet when I would be a lousy example of a dieter this month.  Suffice it to say, my birthday was last week so I treated myself to some birthday yarn, I got lucky and stumbled upon a Wollmeise Lace update at The Loopy Ewe the next day and treated myself to MORE birthday yarn, and… well, suffice it to say that the only thing resembling a “yarn diet” about this month is that the project I’m working on for my diet will result in a reduction of my stash of the particular yarns I am using.  (That is, I haven’t acquired any Sundara Fingering Silky Merino since beginning the project and intend to avoid any further acquisitions during the time I am knitting this project).

I suppose I could call myself a “yarn-specific” dieter.  I don’t tend to do well when attempting to abide by a strict “knit from stash” policy… but an “I have too much of x  yarn so I will not buy any more of it until I have knit through n skeins in my stash” policy?  It kind of works.  Sometimes.

It also works better with some business models than with others.  It works very well when colors are predictable and likely to be around for a great while, or, almost paradoxically, when colors are one-offs and likely to be gone and I’ll never see or think of them again.  (As much as I’ve thought I’d kick myself often for impulse yarn purchases I didn’t make, it’s totally not true.  The ones I generally kick myself for are the ones that I’ve thought about for weeks or months and then decided to make only to discover that the particular yarn I wanted sold out only a few days before I finally made a decision to cough up my cash.  It happens with clothing, too).

I guess there’s a sweet spot of turnover rate that results in maximum purchasing for me.  It’s probably somewhere around every 2 months.  But that’s just a guess.

(In other news, I’m still stealth knitting.  I’m also doing a wee bit of spinning for the first time in, oh, months.  I’m kind of liking this “being home” thing).

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