The first task for my Knitter's Life List Journey is organizing my stash. This comes up in Chapter 10, which seems illogical. I don't feel that I can take a serious run at becoming a more expert knitter unless I organize my stash first, so I am going to do this even though it comes up toward the end of the book.

After all, I already have checked a whole lot of stuff off in every chapter.

I'm trying out Craftsy Unlimited, and I had an afternoon on my own while my house guests were visiting breweries, so I watched a couple of Craftsy classes on stashing and Stashbusting.

I enjoyed both classes and learned some things. Perhaps more importantly, I felt motivated to organize — or at least to find — all my yarn.

The two classes have different approaches to organization. Sally Melville makes a strong case for organizing by color. The KLL, however, says to sort yarn in a way that makes sense to me. So I think the first division should be by quantity.

When I get down to single skeins, I can think of them as a hat's worth and sort them by color. Partial skeins can become a Magic Ball. Or a modular fabric, in Melville style, for a cozy throw, or a crocheted granny square.

In the past, I've sorted by type of yarn. When I want to knit socks, I can go to my sock yarn bin. Makes sense, right?

But it seems to me now that when I want to make a sweater I should be able to go to a bin that contains only sweater quantities of yarn. That way, I can choose the yarn for a sweater immediately.

Current yarns of which I have a sweater's worth:

  • Knitpicks Wool of the Andes Dove
  • Ditto Cobblestone Heather
  • Elan Peruvian Highland Wool Victorian Rose
  • Ditto deep green
  • Knitpicks Sport Haze (palest lilac)
  • Ditto Mai Tai Heather
  • Ditto Seafoam
  • Ditto Blossom Heather
  • Elan Soft Embrace DK Marsala
  • Knitpicks Palette Larch and Green Tea for Fia pullover
  • Outlaw Yarn Bohemia Sport possum fur Arsenic gray
  • Fibra Natura Lima dark green

Baby sweater quantities:

  • Red with a touch of green for the strawberry sweater
  • Geranium pink
  • Debbie Bliss Cashmerino gray

Scarves' worth of yarn:

  • Rowan Kidsilk Haze #582-Trance and #590-Pearl for brioche scarf
  • Prism silk in wine
  • Shadow in Redwood
  • Cloudborne teal

Clearly, I can live off my yarn hump for 2018 in complete comfort.