On Monday I mentioned the yarn stash, and how next year I’d like to do nothing but knit from stash or buy yarn from small-time producers.
And everyone was like, “Didn’t you say that last January? How did that go, by the way?”
I keep this ridiculously complicated and intricate Excel workbook to track my yarn usage. I freely admit that it is crazy to do this. But! It means that I can trot out figures like this with just a few minutes of clicking:
Yards of yarn in stash on 1/1/11: 24,209
Yards of yarn in stash on 11/30/11: 20,571
Yards of yarn used in 2011: 7,709
Obviously these numbers are still provisional, since it’s not the end of the year. (I TOLD YOU I WAS CRAZY ABOUT THIS.) But as you can see, I bought some yarn, and used some yarn, and overall I would say there was a pretty good flow.
But it also means that I still have 19.65 months of yarn on hand, at my current average rate. So there’s still some work to be done.
Ready for the chart?
Mm, I love a good chart.
I’ll try to get some pictures of the actual yarn soon. No promises – the weather has been pretty horrible lately.
When you post this sort of thing, I feel like mailing you sock yarn. (all of my sock yarn is from indies)
Hee hee! Actually sock yarn is probably at least half of the yardage I have on hand…I got way out of control with the sock yarn in my early years as a knitter, before I realized how much slower it is to knit than to buy!
But that’s less than 2 years worth of knitting! What if you get snowed in!?!
I LOVE your chart. And your idea. I think the hardest part would be the initial tally–and the heartstopping moment of seeing the yardage total. Maybe it would be easier in meters
I see a 2012 resolution coming at me. . .
(I used to keep track of my fabric usage, but only starting from 0–I never went back and counted the number of stash yards, only the in and out yards. I think this may have been purposefully self-deceptive.)
You bought four thousand yards of yarn last year? Tsk.
Isn’t that terrible? It didn’t seem like that much at the time!
Makes me want to go into my chart (inspired by you) and figure out how many average months of knitting I have available to me!
I think for people who knit socks, it’s a general truism that half our stash-yarn yardage is sock yarn. I know mine is…..might be even more than half.
I love me a good chart, too. You knit nearly 8k yards (I typed yarns first) in 2011? Good on ya, mate!