Read Online Yarn Harlot by Stephanie Pearl–McPhee - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Stephanie Pearl–McPhee
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be trusted with stash yarn.
I did wonder if maybe I had a problem parting with stash when she accused me of only offering her the “crap yarn,” but I ignored the twinge of insight. I’m sure that everything about my knitting habit is perfectly emotionally healthy.
My husband Joe asked for a sweater. I happily got my coat and credit card and started quizzing him on what kind of yarn he would like. I love him deeply, and I will gleefully part with time and money to make him happy. I babbled on about what kind of design it should be, how handsome he looks in cables, all the while getting ready to fling myself out the door into the snow, make my way across town in the cold, on the bus, to buy him some yarn. He told me I didn’t have to go to the yarn store. I looked at him as if he had three eyes. How on earth can I knit him a sweater without buying yarn? Silly man! Confusion gave way to shock as he told me that he had been looking in the stash. (Did you hear that?
Looking in my stash.
Is nothing sacred?) He said that had seen a really nice yarn, and that there were twenty skeins of it, and that he wanted his sweater knit from that. I surprised even myself when I told him that it was absolutely out ofthe question. No way. I am not using that yarn for a sweater. I’m saving it. I don’t want it to be gone. I want to be able to look at it when I open the stash; I want it in its skeins with the labels still on it. Mine, mine, all mine. He insisted. That was definitely the yarn he wanted. It was when I decided to go online to see if I could buy more of that same yarn that I realized that I might, just possibly, have stash issues.
My stash is remarkably static. Things go in, but they rarely come out. Now, not everything I buy goes into the stash, or at least not into core stash. I have an “outer ring” of stash. I buy it and it gets knit up pretty quickly and never makes it into the stash closet. True stash yarn goes into core stash and it never comes out. If I need yarn from core stash, I go buy something like it. Core stash is not there for using. It is there for “being.” It is not yarn; it is a monument to knitting. It is my homage to wool. It is there to be admired, revered, and uncorrupted, and if Joe thinks he can mess with that, he’s out of his mind.
Joe need never know. His yarn sense is not as finely honed as mine. I am certain that I can find yarn close enough to what he wants; as for my precious yarn, it can go deeper into core stash, where Joe will never find it. I will just make a little trip to the yarn store tomorrow, while he is at work. I’ll pay cash so there’s no paper trail. My darling can have his sweater, and I get to keep my yarn. Is this clever, or what?
Stash issues? I don’t got no stinking stash issues. Nope, not me.
If You Have a Lot of Yarn…
T he knitting newsletter comes to my mailbox four times a year, always full of patterns, suggestions, and stories about knitting. This spring, it had an article about storing and organizing your stash. The article had some really good suggestions, like arranging your yarn by weight and color and storing skeins of yarn artfully clipped to hanging chains where people can see and enjoy them.
These suggestions were great. When I had followed all of them, I had managed about 10 percent of my stash and had to stop. There are only so many chains of yarn you can hang in your home before you start blocking exits. Clearly, the author of the article and I are leading very, very different lives.
Perhaps part of the problem is that I’m a spinner as well as a knitter, so there is an ever-increasing mass of fiber that will become yarn and yarn that recently was fiber. Becoming a spinner has also cut into my knitting time while increasing the yarn stash, which increases the yarn supply at an alarming rate. It does not help that I live in a shoe box of a house, or that I’msharing this house with four other people who seem to feel that they have a right
I did wonder if maybe I had a problem parting with stash when she accused me of only offering her the “crap yarn,” but I ignored the twinge of insight. I’m sure that everything about my knitting habit is perfectly emotionally healthy.
My husband Joe asked for a sweater. I happily got my coat and credit card and started quizzing him on what kind of yarn he would like. I love him deeply, and I will gleefully part with time and money to make him happy. I babbled on about what kind of design it should be, how handsome he looks in cables, all the while getting ready to fling myself out the door into the snow, make my way across town in the cold, on the bus, to buy him some yarn. He told me I didn’t have to go to the yarn store. I looked at him as if he had three eyes. How on earth can I knit him a sweater without buying yarn? Silly man! Confusion gave way to shock as he told me that he had been looking in the stash. (Did you hear that?
Looking in my stash.
Is nothing sacred?) He said that had seen a really nice yarn, and that there were twenty skeins of it, and that he wanted his sweater knit from that. I surprised even myself when I told him that it was absolutely out ofthe question. No way. I am not using that yarn for a sweater. I’m saving it. I don’t want it to be gone. I want to be able to look at it when I open the stash; I want it in its skeins with the labels still on it. Mine, mine, all mine. He insisted. That was definitely the yarn he wanted. It was when I decided to go online to see if I could buy more of that same yarn that I realized that I might, just possibly, have stash issues.
My stash is remarkably static. Things go in, but they rarely come out. Now, not everything I buy goes into the stash, or at least not into core stash. I have an “outer ring” of stash. I buy it and it gets knit up pretty quickly and never makes it into the stash closet. True stash yarn goes into core stash and it never comes out. If I need yarn from core stash, I go buy something like it. Core stash is not there for using. It is there for “being.” It is not yarn; it is a monument to knitting. It is my homage to wool. It is there to be admired, revered, and uncorrupted, and if Joe thinks he can mess with that, he’s out of his mind.
Joe need never know. His yarn sense is not as finely honed as mine. I am certain that I can find yarn close enough to what he wants; as for my precious yarn, it can go deeper into core stash, where Joe will never find it. I will just make a little trip to the yarn store tomorrow, while he is at work. I’ll pay cash so there’s no paper trail. My darling can have his sweater, and I get to keep my yarn. Is this clever, or what?
Stash issues? I don’t got no stinking stash issues. Nope, not me.
If You Have a Lot of Yarn…
T he knitting newsletter comes to my mailbox four times a year, always full of patterns, suggestions, and stories about knitting. This spring, it had an article about storing and organizing your stash. The article had some really good suggestions, like arranging your yarn by weight and color and storing skeins of yarn artfully clipped to hanging chains where people can see and enjoy them.
These suggestions were great. When I had followed all of them, I had managed about 10 percent of my stash and had to stop. There are only so many chains of yarn you can hang in your home before you start blocking exits. Clearly, the author of the article and I are leading very, very different lives.
Perhaps part of the problem is that I’m a spinner as well as a knitter, so there is an ever-increasing mass of fiber that will become yarn and yarn that recently was fiber. Becoming a spinner has also cut into my knitting time while increasing the yarn stash, which increases the yarn supply at an alarming rate. It does not help that I live in a shoe box of a house, or that I’msharing this house with four other people who seem to feel that they have a right
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