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Yarn and How Not to Feel Guilty About It
ONCE UPON A TIME, before I came to understand about yarn and the way things are, I felt sort of bad about my stash. Let’s talk about when I first started dating my husband. The first few times I had him over I sort of “tidied up the yarn” a little. (You do know, don’t you, that by “tidied up the yarn” I mean I stuffed it into bags and then into closets and cupboards and boxes and anywhere else I could to hide it?)
I didn’t hide it all, though, partly because it’s impossible and partly because I didn’t want to hide the knitting thing entirely (it’s like trying to keep secret that you occasionally sit under the back tree by the river singing long songs in a falsetto chicken voice). When you knit this much, it’s such a big part of your personality that anyone who spends time with you is going to notice sooner or later. I just wanted an opportunity to charm him enough that when he found out about all the wool, he wouldn’t back away from me slowly and then run screaming into the night. I wanted to let him in on the wonder that was me (and the stash) and, I hoped, by the time that he really understood how much yarn there was — and how little closet space he’d be getting — we’d be properly together and he’d have a legal obligation to stay … at least until I could whack a pair of hand-knit socks on him and make him mine forever.
MANAGING YOUR STASH
The whole time I was dating my husband, I kept quiet the extent of the yarn stash. I started to reveal it in stages, doses equal to the things that he revealed about himself. I discovered that he collected guitars, so I left the hall closet open one day. He showed me his set of antique amplifiers (Hint: amps are big), and I showed him my set of vintage merino. He has a darkroom for his photography habit? What a coincidence. I have under-bed storage for my sock yarns. He has every issue of Popular Electronics from the 1950s? I mention that the funny manure smell he noted the other day might be the fleece in the basement.
Time passed and we came to share a home, and wouldn’t you know it, he has never said a word. Part of it, I know, is that he respects me and my woolly choices, part of it is that he likes to see me happy, and part of it is that he knows what my reaction would be if he tried to tell me what to do with my stuff or how much I should have. I’ve returned the favor. It’s taken a concerted effort, but it turns out that if you don’t want to take any flack about the 17 half-knit sweaters on the dining room table, you just have to keep your mouth shut about the half-soldered recording console in the living room.
Marriage is about compromise.
BE DISCREET
You don’t need to be so honest with the rest of the world. There’s no reason for most of the ordinary people you run into — acquaintances, employers, psychiatrists — to know exactly what’s going on with all the yarn or why you have so much. Seldom will you be understood, so discretion is the better part of valor. If you get caught, however, and someone unexpectedly discovers the full scope and extent of your yarn collection and is stunned into saying something, I offer the following retorts.
Someone says, “You sure have a lot of yarn.”
You reply:
Response 1
“Thanks for noticing. It’s been a big job and it’s taken a long time, but I think I’m finally getting there.”
Response 2
“This? No, no. This is just what I need for the week. The real collection is in my rental storage space.”
Response 3
“Yeah, I know it’s a lot. I really wanted a rock collection, but rocks are so heavy. This takes up a lot more room, but it sure is lighter.”
Response 4
“Sorry, I couldn’t hear you. All this yarn muffles the sound in here.”
Response 5
“What? What yarn? These are my kittens.”
CONSIDER THE ENTERTAINMENT VALUE
There’s nothing wrong with buying stash. Many knitters feel guilty about this and attempt to curb their instincts to buy it all the time. If you were a carpenter, nobody would be surprised that you had a lot of wood. If you were a painter, we would fully expect there to be a houseful of paints. Provided that your inclination to buy yarn doesn’t exceed your ability to pay for it, you really don’t have a problem. If, however, you find yourself hocking furniture or skipping meals to get it, you may want to cut back a little.
Really, the best way never to feel guilty about your stash is to think of yarn not as piles of recklessly purchased fiber (no matter how recklessly you purchased it) but instead as entertainment you’ve bought. By my reckoning, it’s a pretty sweet deal.
A cheap ticket to see the musical Les Misérables in downtown Toronto costs about $50 (if you go alone) and lasts for three hours. That breaks down to $16.66 per hour for entertainment. A movie ticket is about $12 and if you’re lucky, it’ll be a long film. Let’s say it’s costing you $6 per hour to be entertained. My local video-rental place seems like a deal; I can get a movie for $5, which makes my cost per hour about $2.50.
I could take this further and look at CD and DVD collections, or, without picking on anyone in particular, my husband’s affinity for antique audio equipment, or the cost of an Alaskan cruise, but the important point is this: A ball of sock yarn (a really nice one that will make two socks) costs about $16 if I get it on sale. If, then, I start to knit it up, it’s going to take me (if I don’t do a pattern or cables or anything at all that would slow me down) about 16 hours to complete. That makes my entertainment cost a whopping one buck an hour. If I do fancy socks, it’s even more worthwhile. Let’s say I put a fussy cable down the side of my socks. Well, now, that’s going to take longer. It might take me 20 hours to knit those socks and now my entertainment is costing me just 80 cents an hour! Eighty cents? Who can feel guilty about spending 80 cents an hour when at the end of it you’ve not only scored yourself a whole pile of fun, but you also have a pair of socks?
Nobody gives you socks at the end of a musical, even if you buy the good seats.
FINDING A PLACE FOR IT ALL
I suffer under the delusion that I have my yarn “stored.” Nothing could be further from the truth. In reality, all I have is my yarn — at the best of times —”contained.” Once you admit your full and decent love affair with yarn and knitting, there’ll come a time when the stash outgrows whatever box, bin, or basket you’ve been keeping it in. For me, this time came and went a long time ago … so I now have a really eclectic system.
I store yarn in “the yarn closets” and in plastic bins stacked in my office. I have several bookshelves full, and boxes, bins, and baskets throughout the house. My storage needs long ago surpassed my storage possibilities, and since then I’ve been a big fan of the “nook-and-cranny” system. I put yarn above and behind books on bookshelves, in cupboards in and around the other things that are there, and in any other wee space I can fit a skein.
DO YOU NEED TO LOSE A FEW POUNDS?
The concept of a yarn diet, as difficult as it may be to approach, is a fair one. One simply refrains from new yarn purchases, using only stash yarns, until the required number of yards or pounds has been “lost.” I admit you have to be pretty far gone before you need this sort of drastic action … but you could be there. Let’s get an assessment:
Question 1
If asked to move so that you were at least 10 feet away from yarn, you would be:
on the other side of the room.
on the other side of the house.
in the bathroom.
outside on the sidewalk.
Question 2
How many people have mentioned your yarn “weight” to you in the last year?
Nobody; how could anyone tell I have yarn?
Only my husband, but he can be insensitive like that.
Three, but they all live in this house, want closet space, and can’t be trusted.
Only my neighbor across the road, but that’s because he can see in our windows. I got curtains.
Question 3
Has anyone ever told you that you have too much wool?
Nope.
Just my husband, but he can be insensitive like that.
The lady who owns the yarn shop said something, but I think she’s jealous.
Not a single person. Then again, I haven’t had much company since I gave up the couch for yarn space.
If your answers are mostly A: For the love of all things knitted, get to the yarn store. You have nothing.
If your answers are mostly B: Congratulations. You may enter at the amateur level. You don’t need a diet, and can continue to spend freely in the yarn store, but you should consider some new shelving. You’re going to need it.
If your answers are mostly C: You have, despite a substantial stash, no need to control your yarn intake. You should approach yarn with commonsense moderation and … oh, nuts. You’re doomed. It’s just a matter of time.
If your answers are mostly D: I don’t want to use the “D” word, but you may want to consider choosing lighter-weight yarns more often, if you know what I mean.
STASH IDENTIFICATION: SMELLS LIKE MOHAIR TO ME
I’m forever finding yarn in the stash that I cannot identify. Despite my best efforts to be an organized and well-informed knitter, either I have weak moments or someone keeps breaking in and messing up my stash. Ball bands go missing (probably because I gave the yarn a test drive, then lost the ball band, rammed the yarn into a plastic bag, and then shoved it back into the stash, naked and unlabeled). Sometimes, though, because I have pangs of remorse and moments of insight, I’m compelled to write what’s inside on the outside of the bag. In this case, it’s likely that I’ll go into the stash, discover a bag that says wool/acrylic on the bag and then stand around wondering about the possibilities.
They are:
• The yarn is wool, but when I wrote on the bag, there was another yarn in with it that was acrylic.
• The yarn is acrylic, but when I wrote on the bag, there was another yarn in with it that was wool.
• The yarn is a wool/acrylic blend (of course, I don’t remember buying a wool/acrylic blend, but that doesn’t mean much. I think I go into a yarn-buying trance under extreme yarn conditions. I don’t remember buying half of the stash. I don’t let it bother me).
• The yarn is neither wool, nor acrylic, nor a blend, but is instead some yarn of a completely unrelated fiber content that got jammed into a leftover bag that I didn’t notice had writing on it while I was trying to be a better person who keeps an orderly stash.
Naturally, because I am me, all attempts to organize my life or have a labeled stash and keep things in an orderly fashion are doomed to result in chaos and confusion, basically the opposite effect of what I was aiming for. In fact, instead of being a knitter who has this stash of power that makes sense and is accessible and inspiring, it turns out that I’m actually a knitter who inexplicably removes the ball bands from yarn and then jams the skeins into an enormous stash of other yarn that is remarkably similar, none of which I remember buying.
In my defense (and clearly, I need defending, since I can’t count the number of times I’ve found mystery yarn in the stash, with the label long abandoned or lost), I’m also a big thrift-store and sale-bin yarn buyer, and while that’s frugal and admirable, it also breeds any number of bandless balls. I’m also a spinner with a lot of spinning friends, and gracious gifts of hand-spun don’t come with labels.
There’s stuff I need to know about my mystery yarn before I can knit it, and some simple yarn interrogation can tell a lot. Using a system of tests, measures, and cleverness, you can usually figure out pretty much what you have, even if you’ve lost the ball band.
Things can get a little odd for a yarn detective, so you might want to do some of your sleuthing while you’re alone. Many valid yarn investigation methods might lead your nearest and dearest to believe you’re a couple of skeins short of a sweater (if you know what I mean).
THE BURN TEST
There are three things you need to know about your suspect: what it’s made of, what weight it is, and (heaven help you) how much there is. The most reliable way of figuring out what your yarn is made of is the burn test. This highly scientific way to torch your stash can tell you a lot about what you’ve got. Warning: I feel bad even mentioning this, because I know you’re really smart, but I feel compelled to mention the obvious hazards of executing the burn test. First of all, have some water nearby. You never know what will burn, or how well. Second, conduct the burn test over a metal sink, not plastic. I’m not apologizing for what will happen if you drop a flaming piece of cotton into a meltable sink. Finally, I (as a woman who has set fire to far bigger chunks of the stash than she planned) suggest you burn small pieces of yarn and hold the pieces with tweezers or metal tongs (again, not plastic). Fire can travel faster than you think.
Ready? Get a piece of yarn, set a match to it, and watch closely.
THE BURN TEST: FIBER BY FIBER
Wool
Shrinks from the flame: No
Smells like: Burning hair or feathers
The flame: A small orange flame, difficult to keep burning; may simply smolder instead of burn
Ignition: Doesn’t ignite quickly and the flame goes out if wool is removed from the fire
What’s left behind: A gummy ash forms along the burning edge of the wool, but when it’s completely burned it leaves a crumbly ash
Cotton
Shrinks from the flame: No
Smells like: Burning paper
The flame: Large and steady yellow or amber flame
Ignition: Lights right away and will have a glowing ember that travels after the flame is blown out
What’s left behind: Small amount of soft gray ash
Linen
Shrinks from the flame: No
Smells like: Burning grass
The flame: Large and steady
Ignition: Slower than cotton
What’s left behind: Soft gray ash
Silk
Shrinks from the flame: No
Smells like: Burning hair
The flame: Tiny flame
Ignition: Burns slowly but is harder to put out than cotton or linen
What’s left behind: A black shiny ash that crumbles
Acrylic
Shrinks from the flame: Yes
Smells like: Acrid or harsh odor
The flame: A white-orange flame that burns quickly
Ignition: Catches easily, will burn until extinguished
What’s left behind: Hard ash
Nylon
Shrinks from the flame: Yes
Smells like: Burning plastic
The flame: Flame has a blue base and orange tip
Ignition: Melts, then burns
What’s left behind: Hard ash
Rayon
Shrinks from the flame: Yes
Smells like: Burning leaves
The flame: Orange
Ignition: Lights and burns rapidly
What’s left behind: Very little ash
THE BLEACH TEST
If the burn test hasn’t helped you enough, try the bleach test. Put a small piece of the yarn in question in a dish of chlorine bleach, the kind you use for the laundry. Cotton and acrylic will stay put (though cotton will bleach white or yellow) but wool, silk, and other animal proteins (cashmere and alpaca, for example) will dissolve entirely in the bleach.
The bleach test and its effect on wool are important to remember the next time you want to get a blueberry stain off a really nice wool sweater that took you four months to knit.
THE FELT-ABILITY TEST
Wool (including mohair, alpaca, angora, and llama) felts, shrinks, and sticks to itself when you expose it to water, heat, and agitation. Silk, quiviut, and man-made fibers, on the other hand, do not. Take a length of the suspect yarn, squish it into a ball between your fingers, and then immerse it in hot soapy water. Squish, roll, and smoosh the yarn roughly for five minutes, then take it out and have a look. Try to pull apart your little ball. Is the yarn sticking to itself? Has it shrunk a little or begun to cling into a ball shape? If so, you probably have wool. If the yarn is still yarn, showing absolutely no inclination to stick to itself, you likely have acrylic, cotton, silk, a man-made fiber of another sort, or a superwash wool.
Superwash wool is wool that has been specially treated so that it will not felt, full, or shrink. If the suspect fiber seemed like wool when you burned or bleached it but it has now failed the felting test, consider the possibility that it is superwash. You may also consider the possibility that this whole thing is going to drive you nuts and then bury the skein in the backyard under a tree. We all understand.
IT SEEMS LIKE …
If, after burning, sniffing, bleaching, and guessing you still aren’t sure what you have, go back to the stash and find something similar to what you think you have. If you think it’s wool, put a wool yarn through the tests and see if it behaves like the suspect.
There is no test I know of (short of getting a microscope and an education in these matters) that will help you distinguish among different animal fibers. You can guess, by characteristics like elasticity and drape, but being able to reliably tell the difference between alpaca and llama is going to remain a challenge.
FIGURING WEIGHT
With experience, you’re probably going to be able to tell if a yarn is chunky or worsted weight by giving it a little squeeze and, eventually, with a glance. If you don’t have this experience, or if you’re dealing with hand-spun, where it can be a little trickier, you could probably use a few hints.
The most reliable way to tell what you have is to swatch some of it, but I prefer using “wraps per inch” or WPI. This method is faster and leaves more knitting time. Find a ruler (sorry … I don’t know where it is) and your yarn and plant yourself in a comfy chair. Wrap the yarn around the ruler — not too tight or you stretch the yarn; not too loose or you can’t measure properly. Just wrap, laying the yarn next to itself on the ruler so that you fill all the spaces between the strands, but don’t squash them together. Find the marking for one inch on the ruler and count how many wraps of the yarn fit in that space. If you are an inconsistent wrapper or a really precise knitter, measure the wraps over a couple of inches and divide to get an average and consistent number.
HOW MUCH DO YOU HAVE?
Once you’ve figured out what your yarn is made of and what weight it is, the only thing left to wonder is “How much is in the ball?” (Well, there are also these questions: “Is it enough to make a sweater?” and “When will the world have peace?” but you know what I mean.)
Wraps per Inch |
Approximate yarn weight |
Common gauge |
More than 18 |
Floss or cobweb (occasionally referred to by non-knitters as “crazyville”) |
Variable, depending on effect desired |
18 |
Lace weight |
Variable |
16 |
Fingering/sock yarn/baby yarn |
28 stitches to 4"/10 cm |
14 |
Sport/light worsted/DK (double knitting) |
24 stitches to 4"/10 cm |
12 |
Worsted/aran |
20 stitches to 4"/10 cm |
10 |
Chunky/rug yarn |
16 stiches to 4"/10 cm |
8 or less |
Bulky/superbulky |
12 or less stitches to 4"/10 cm |
Following are five ways to guesstimate how much you have of a particular yarn.
Method 1
Get a McMorran balance. This little gizmo is a kind of scale set to balance at a certain weight. You hang a piece of yarn on it, snip away at it until the arm balances, then measure the piece of yarn you have and multiply by 100. This tells you how many yards there are per pound. Then you weigh the skein and bob’s yer uncle, you know how much yarn you have. (Disadvantage: You need to get a McMorran balance, and because it’s mainly a spinner/weaver gadget, you may not be able to get one from your local yarn store.)
Method 2
Get a yarn meter. Clamp the meter onto a table in between the ball of yarn and your ball winder. Slide the yarn through the slot in the top of the thing, attach it to the ball winder, and start pulling the yarn through the meter by winding it on the ball winder. The yarn passes through little rollers in the middle that count off yards or meters, and displays how much has passed through. (Disadvantage: Requires a ball winder, and because most have a digital display, they stop working if you happen to spill coffee on them.)
Method 3
Cut 10 yards of yarn from the ball and take the piece and that ball over to the post office. Get someone there to weigh the 10 yards. (If your post office is sort of cranky about your knitting problems, you could buy a scale that measures down to half a gram.) Now you know how much 10 yards weighs, and you can weigh the ball and do the math to figure out the rest. (Disadvantage: This method is not as accurate as the meter or balance, and it relies on your ability to do math. If you have trouble with that kind of thing, you may want another option.)
Method 4
Wind the yarn around a skein winder like a niddy noddy, or use the back of a chair if you don’t have one. Then measure the distance around the chair, count the number of times it went around, and then do the math. This is a good option for the knitter who has time but no tools. (Disadvantange: It’s as tedious as explaining the phone rules to a 16-year-old girl, and just as time-consuming.)
Method 5
Measure it against a yardstick. This is probably the most accurate, least technical method, but unless you have a really short skein of yarn, it’s only slightly more fun than shaving your head with a rusty razor.
YARN TYPES
I’ve never met a yarn I didn’t like. Well, let me take that back. I’ve never met a yarn I didn’t like for something. All yarns have a purpose (even if you can’t imagine it). I admit, if you are a traditional lace knitter, then the purpose of bulky neon yellow acrylic might be lost on you, but I assure you, there’s some other knitter standing in another yarn shop somewhere else in the world holding your treasured lace weight in her hand and thinking, “What on earth would you do with this thread?” There are knitters who never knit with wool and knitters who use only cotton. There are knitters who’ve told me that silk smells funny (I refuse to entertain that) and knitters who find mohair too fuzzy. There are also self-professed “fiber snobs” who use only natural fibers and frown on acrylic, but they are canceled out by the acrylic fans who are laughing their rear ends off when the snobs get a moth infestation. Then there are the knitters who know this:
All yarn is here for a reason. No one fiber (or sort of knitter) is morally superior to another.
If you can’t stand on the moral high ground for choosing the right fiber (or at least, I hope you won’t), then how do you pick? Advantages and disadvantages. Think of your potential yarn as a date and write yourself a little “pro-and-con” chart, just like you did when you were a teenager and had to make a decision.
Before you go making a blanket statement about a fiber, like “Wool is itchy” or “Acrylic is crap,” keep in mind that fibers may have changed since the last time you met them. Acrylic is no longer (not necessarily, anyway) the sort of plastic extruded stuff you remember from the 1970s. Some of it is downright elegant, soft, and — in the case of new microfiber technology — intriguing and unique. On the other side of the fence, wool isn’t necessarily (though you can sure find it if you look for it) the scratchy stuff your winter long johns were made out of, either. Go to the yarn shop and take an open mind with you.
WOOL
Wool is the vanilla of the fiber world. It’s the workhorse of knitting and we know why. Wool is warm when it’s wet, emits heat as it dries (damn, that’s cool), and is a renewable resource. It’s also naturally flame-retardant, making it a great choice for blankies and clothes for kids. There’s tough wool that wears like iron and wool softer than butter. There’s superwash wool that goes in the washer and drier and wool that doesn’t go in the washer and drier, making it good for felting. Wool is forgiving and elastic, retains its shape well, and can be persuaded (by blocking) to take on a new shape. Wool is the fiber not of choice, but of choices.
One very good reason to knit with wool is its malleability. Wool stretches and shrinks, and, generally speaking, bends to the will of the knitter very nicely. If you are, like me, an “imprecise” knitter, this characteristic of wool will suit you, as it forgives mistakes and unevenness like no other fiber.
Wool is moth food and if you have a big stash, you can’t put that much moth food in one place and not expect them to flutter to the buffet. Also, wool felts. Although I presented this as an advantage above, that was when I was assuming you wanted it to. When it happens by accident, it’s a disadvantage. Wool takes — much like the people who will wear it — a little care when washing.
COTTON
Cotton is a natural fiber, cool (cooler than wool) to wear, and a wonderful option for knitters who live in southern climes. (I understand that my affection for wool probably seems silly to Hawaiian knitters.) It’s durable, comes in many wonderful and vibrant colors because it takes dye well, and is almost without exception soft and approachable. Like wool, cotton is available at a range of prices.
Cotton is inelastic, and things that depend on elasticity, like socks and ribbing, are going to need to be either abandoned or adapted (sometimes by adding elastic) to make them work. Cotton can also be quite heavy, something to consider if you’re talking about a size large cabled sweater that you expect to keep its shape. (Ask me how I know.)
ACRYLIC
Acrylic yarns tend to be less expensive than their natural-fiber counterparts and are not moth food. Acrylic yarn is easy to find, and most acrylics are also easy care, happily swinging in and out of the laundry without so much as a nod to the risk of felting.
Acrylic yarn can’t be blocked the way wool can and, with few exceptions, is less elastic and forgiving than wool. Acrylic yarn doesn’t breathe or absorb moisture either, and although it doesn’t felt, it can be ruined with heat, so follow the label instructions for washing and don’t ever iron it. Remember, too, that acrylic is especially dangerous in a fire: it melts, burns, and sticks. This makes it an especially poor choice for anything you plan to put on a child at night.
CRAP IN, CRAP OUT
This was a phrase we took to using when the kids were little. It meant that if you fed a kid a chocolate bar and four cookies, let her miss her nap, and then sat her down for 30 minutes of TV, you shouldn’t have been surprised when she spent all 30 minutes trying to kick her sister in the head because “she won’t stop looking at me.”
Knitting is like that. (Not that it tries to kick you in the head, though I understand that if you’ve recently experienced a knitting loss, it may feel that this particular metaphor is too close for comfort.) In knitting, your end product can be only as good as your starting place. Crap in, crap out.
There are exceptions to this: knitters who can start with the biggest pile of crap and have it turn out to be a breathtaking beauty. It’s like they have the ability to look deep into a yarn’s eyes and see its unique charms and then imagine how best this particular yarn can be brought into the light and be all that it can be. It’s a gift, and not many of us have it. Most of us, given crap yarn, are going to knit crap. Whenever I meet one of these rare knitters who doesn’t, I’m always torn between falling on the ground at her feet and begging her to tell me all she knows, and locking her in my basement and never speaking of her again.
THE POTENTIAL OF YARN
It’s difficult to write, once you’re done with the technical aspects of yarn, about the real stuff you need to know about it: the soul of yarn, its magic, and why, beyond it being the material we need to practice the art of knitting, we love it. I could wax poetic for hours about the softness, the colors, the textures … the things I like about yarn. But none of that really gets to the meat of it.
In the end, the reason we fill our houses with it, visit it in yarn shops, speak of it in glowing terms, and hoard it with passion is that it is pure potential. Every ball or skein of yarn holds something inside it, and the great mystery of what that might be can be almost spiritual. These six balls of wool could be a shawl my mum puts around her shoulders when she’s cold, or maybe it’s a blanket a friend wraps her baby in. Maybe that baby takes a shine to it and it becomes his beloved companion blankie, comforting him for years and years. Maybe it’s a sweater that my daughter is wearing the day she gets her first kiss, and from then on my yarn is a part of her memory of that day. Maybe, just maybe, those six balls are a scarf and hat that get tucked away for years and long after I’m gone someone pulls them out and says, “Remember how Grammy was with all the wool? Remember how she knit all the time?” fingering the soft wool and pondering who I was and what I did while I was here.
It’s a mystery, each ball of yarn … and I don’t know what each one is going to be or what life it will take when I finally set needles to it. But each one will be something I made with my own two hands. This yarn, then — my whole big sweeping stash — is the stuff of dreams.
Some people collect rocks or seashells. Enough said.
Yarn, if you get enough of it, can totally act as house insulation, helping to cool your house in the summer and hold in heat during the winter. It’s almost irresponsible, in the face of global climate change, not to have a stash of yarn.
Wool is flame-retardant and what people in the fire business refer to as “self-extinguishing.” If something self-extinguishing is exposed to a flame, when the flame is removed it will no longer burn. This means that (in my special little world) having an extensive woolen stash is practically a safety thing. Remind me to call my insurance company to have my rates lowered.
Speaking of insurance, a stash protects against any number of emergencies. What if you lost your job and could no longer afford to buy yarn? What if you had to move to a remote mountain pass in Nepal and couldn’t get to a yarn shop without a five-day hike? What if, out of the blue, huge felted woolen car cozies became popular and the world’s supply of fiber was eaten up by the auto industry, causing wool scarcity and widespread panic among knitters everywhere? Better to be prepared. You never know when supply could dry up.
It’s a way better alternative than drinking heavily or doing drugs, which is probably the way I’d spend my time if you took my knitting away.
