The First Step

It's taken nearly 4 years...

It began simply enough.

Enter a foreign (or familiar) yarn store, pick out the colors you like best. Or the textures. Or the weight. Buy whatever you want. You're just starting out, you don't have anything.
Fill a basket.
Yarn stores online have sales. 30% off! 40% off! 75% off?!? Buy the yarn. It's on sale, how can you not? And I get 5% back? How. can. I. not?
Fill another basket.
Subscribe to magazines. Ooh, this project looks nice—but I don't have appropriate yarn for it... nope, I don't, not in these two baskets.
Buy the yarn.
Oh, but I'm already working on this project, and that other one is next. So I'll save all this for later...
Repeat. 20 times.
Buy more baskets. Buy shelving.

Buy a bird cage and shove yarn in it.

A yarn crawl, you say? Well, I have to support my LYSs. I'll just buy one skein from each.
An out-of-town trip, you say? Well, I have to find the LYS and support it—this is a small industry, after all. We have to help each other. I'll just buy a skein or two...
A yarn convention, you say? VKL? Well, these are yarns I've never seen. I might never see them again. I have to buy a few skeins from each...

Thus, the descent into madness.

Oh that doesn't look so bad...

There's much more below the yarn surface. 

That's a basket under that table. With more yarn peeking out.

People, I have a problem. I know from these pictures it just looks like my office is in squalor, but the sad fact is, I am buried in yarn. I'm drowning in it.

I have a problem. (First Step)

I'm posting this here, so I can't get away from it, and so my ghost readers can  hold me to task.

I cannot, for any reason whatsoever, buy more yarn.  

As much as it pains me to do it, I have to cut myself off.

My problem is so intense, so deeply ingrained, that I actually said to The Doo, "Well, if I don't buy anymore yarn and just start burning through this yarn, then if I go to a yarn store in the next few months and see a yarn I like, I can buy it for myself and hide it away, then give it to myself as a present once I've dutifully used up all the old yarn." Which makes absolutely no. sense. Plus, there's nowhere to hide more yarn.


Can we just go over that one more time? I tried to make a deal with myself that if I didn't buy more yarn, I could buy more yarn. Even if I still have too much. I could basically reward myself for... well, nothing. That's like putting a dress on a tree and saying it isn't a tree anymore. Or something to that effect. My brain isn't working up to speed anymore because it's crammed full of yarn.

So, the vow. I cannot, for any reason whatsoever, buy more yarn. I can't buy yarn on sale; I can't buy from foreign stores just because they are foreign; I can't buy a skein just 'cuz it's pretty.

I cannot, for any reason whatsoever, buy more yarn. 


Not until I've used up all this yarn. Or at least gotten it back to just being the yarn in the honeycomb shelves and birdcage. And one basket. I'll give myself that! Get down to shelves, cage, and one basket, and I'm golden. But this business of four baskets, two Lion Brand gallon-sized bags, a closet (not pictured), additional shopping and shipping bags full of yarn has to end.

It's over people. The Golden Age has ended. The Industrial Age has begun. Time to get crackin'.

All of this means that this blog will become a graveyard of skeins, reborn as projects. Get ready to see some projects. I'm going to take before and after pictures of every skein and the project it is reborn as. I have to see my progress to know I'm doing well. Like getting a one week, one month, one year chip. I also must impart to you, dear readers, just how much yarn I ridiculously have. Skein by skein, project by project, you will see my madness unraveling (har har).
Some projects will be from patterns written by other people; some projects will be patterns I have written. Either way, the rest of this year is going to be crazy and productive.

Mainly because I want more yarn for Christmas.


flossie