I have a confession to make...

I thought long and hard about writing this post.  Tucking it in here on a Wednesday when nobody expects me to post seems to me to be my safest bet.  So here goes...

I have a confession to make.

I am a yarnaholic.

image from zazzle.com

I know...  you're laughing and saying "That's you're big confession?" because if you're reading this, you likely are too.  A yarnaholic to some degree.  Or a fiberaholic, or a fabricaholic, or some other overindulger of crafty goods.  My confession isn't to be construed as judging.  I am not.  I love yarn.  I never want to not have yarn.  I love being able to shop my yarn stash whenever a crochet pattern strikes my fancy.  I want more yarn.

That said...  I have too much.

This is how I know...

Recently, as I was meandering around Ravelry, I came across some stash-down challenges.  Having felt for some time I have too much yarn, the idea of "stashing down" appealed to me very much.

One of the  challenges I came across was a 100-skein challenge.  The challenge is to remove or work-down 100 skeins of yarn in 2018.  That sounded like a lot of skeins to me, but at the same time I wondered how much of a dent that would actually make in my stash.  I knew my stash was big, but I didn't know exactly how big.

So, clearly, the first thing I needed to do was determine how much yarn I actually have.  Over the last few years I have recorded all of my yarn stash on Ravelry.  Well, just last night, I found out that if you download the Excel file of your Ravelry stash, you can then have your computer sum up the different categories (like # of skeins, yardage, anything that has a numeric value).

Now, I'm almost too embarrassed to admit this, but for the sake of enlightenment and to challenge others  of you to know how much yarn you actually have (if you want to know), I'm going to confess...  If I did the "summing" correctly on my Excel chart, and divided by 100 properly, I have enough stashed yarn to do the 100-skein challenge for TWENTY years!!!!!

image from imgflip.com

While you pick yourself up off the floor and fix your glasses, let me just say I'm dumbfounded, too.  I mean, I knew I had a lot of stash.  It's neatly organized for the most part, which is possibly why I could have so much and not even realize how much.  But TWENTY YEARS worth????   How did that even happen?   How much did that cost me to accumulate?  How many hours did I spend just logging that much yarn onto my Ravelry stash page - let alone taking pictures of, editing pictures, posting pictures...?

Don't try to answer those questions.  They are rhetorical, and I really don't want to know the answers.  Even though I think it's fair to ask them.

Before doing this little exercise, I was already telling myself I needed to go on a yarn diet.  But for TWENTY YEARS???   Forget dieting.  I'm just now hoping I live long enough to see the end of my stash.

Sigh

Well...  I've got to do something about this.  Thinking I'm going to make much of a dent in my stash in a year's time is likely not a reasonable expectation.  But I've got to do something.  Even if it just looks like baby-stepping.  Or even if it looks like this:

image from amusingyarns.com

Here's what I'm going to try to do.  In my weekly YOP posts, when I show a finished project, I'm going to try to record a running tally of how many skeins I've used.   I'm going to do it without fanfare and only those who've happened to read this post will understand the significance of my running tally.  The tally may go down on occasion if I need to buy more yarn to complete a project, but hopefully, the overall tally will head in an upward direction most of the time.   When it hits 100 skeins I may throw  party or something.  Or maybe I'll just take a nap.

I'm not asking anyone to join me.  Or to share my views or concerns about my yarn hoard.  But I'd sure welcome encouragement from time to time if I manage to make progress.

And now that I got that off my chest, I need to get busy.  My crochet hooks (and yarn) await!

image from zazzle.com

Editing to note that I got it wrong above.  I know...  dividing by 100 is tough isn't it?   Actually, I was looking at the wrong column on the Excel chart.  I was looking at a column called "Skeins".  But today (the day after I wrote this post) I noticed another column called "Remaining skeins".   😯  Evidently, the "Skeins" column is a record of all skeins entered into my stash.  So, assuming "Remaining skeins" is what I actually have to work from, my recalculations show that I only have 18 years of yarn!  

I know.  I know.  It's still ridiculous.  But somehow I feel like I've made progress already. 😃