S.O.U.S.

“But wait! What about the S.O.U.S’s?”

“Stashes of unusual size? I don’t think they exist…”

{and then they both get eaten by a ginormous ball of worsted, the end}

Ahem. On this day in history…I finally finished the moth-inspired stash toss. Yea verily, I have pulled out from its hiding place (almost) every single ball, skein, and sad remnant of same.

I have cataloged. I have handled. I have shaken, stirred, tossed, and picked apart my whole stash. I have vacuumed everywhere, twice, even all the way under the bed and between the mattress and the box spring and the tops of my floor-to-ceiling shelves. (That was some trick, let-me-tell-you.) I have wept over victims. And I have started decontamination procedures on suspicious looking balls. And many not suspicious looking balls, but who wants to take the chance, NOT ME.

(First, they are going to spend a few days in the freezer. Then I’m going to take them out and let them sit at room temperature for twenty-four hours. Then they go in the microwave for three separate fifteen-second bursts, with a one to two minute cooling down period between them. Then they go back into the freezer for another three days. And then I repeat the microwave thing. And then…we’ll see.) (I will never actually trust any of this yarn again. Which is unfortunate, but then again if it will go tramping off with a bunch of vagrant moths, well, really…fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice…)

ANYWAY. I put (most) of my stash up on Ravelry as I went. I left out partial balls of this and that, and the occasional skein box of weird acrylic or random wool I had no genealogy for, but for the most part, I now have everything up there in my Ravelry stash.

In related news, sweet sainted sheep o’mercy, but I have a lot of yarn. I made the mistake of asking myself, Just how much yarn do you suppose I’ve got?

So I exported my stash database from Ravelry to a spreadsheet. And then I used the SUM function and guess what?

I have admitted to 654 balls, skeins and cones of yarn, which together are 187,845 yards in length. That’s 563,535 feet of string. In my bedroom.

And, that’s just the ones I’m willing to discuss. There is probably about 25% of that amount that is still my little secret. (So, that’s just between you, me and the whole entire Internet, ‘kay?)

So, you can imagine how I felt this afternoon when I opened up my front door and discovered a box sitting on it – a medium-ish box from KnitPicks.

That’s right.

I’m so excited I can hardly stand it! Because guess what?! It’s YARN!

{sarcasm}…thank DOG, because I was just about out…{/sarcasm}

Heh. OK, all kidding and sarcasm aside, it’s a whack of Knit Picks Comfy (75% Pima cotton, 25% acrylic, machine washable, fingering weight), and a “What A Character” hoodie kit, which, it appears, is no longer available from them. Dang. (Although I shouldn’t be surprised, when I bought it precisely because it was on drastic sale with banners that warned “LAST CHANCE!” and “SALE SALE SALE!” and such.)

But I did find some pictures of the design options. Still charmed by this thing. Still can’t wait to make it for Captain Adventure, although I may tweak it around a little bit so that the monster is going after a yarn ball, because he is still my little Yarn Monster. And, the yarn in the kit is also Comfy, in worsted weight.

I bought the other stuff because I am going to be making a sweater for someone who is sensitive to wool – and guess what is in every.single.skein of even semi-decent fingering weight yarn I already own?

Oh yeah. At least 75% wool.

And I find it rather amusing that my first thought when I saw the box was, Oh, GAH! I’ve gotta keep the moths out of this!! QUICK, ANOTHER SPACE BAG!!!!!!!

And then I thought, …wait…cotton/acrylic…

And then I opened it up and groped at it and found myself thinking, Wow, this is nice stuff…I totally need MORE of this…AND ALSO IT IS SAFE FROM MOTHS!!!, because this is a huge selling point, and after all, having lost a whole entire bag of Ancient Llama Yarn I Was Never Going To Knit Anyway, well…there’s a hole in my heart, right? A terrible rift in the fabric of my stash!

Obviously, I need a box or two (or three…or maybe just one RRRRRRREALLY-REALLY BIG ONE) of this wonderful cotton-y stuff to fill it…

(Kidding, kidding. I have enough yarn.) (Well, mostly kidding. Except that really, this stuff feels gooooood. Soft, sweet…only three bucks a ball…)

(…curse you, Knit Picks, why can’t your yarns suck so I am not perpetually tempted…?)

(…also, I found no fewer than five works-in-progress that had gotten on the bottom of other things and been forgotten…two different socks, another petal jack in yellow, a vest I’d forgotten all about, and a little chenille jacket that is such an absolute mystery to me that I’m seriously wondering if it belongs to someone else, although how it would have ended up in my knitting basket is beyond me…)

(…my gah, I am the poster child for ADD Awareness right now, aren’t I…)

(…oh look! A squirrel!!!!...)

(...mmmmmm...new yarn smell....mmmmmm...)