Feeling Content

I experience ups and downs with my crafting. There are times when I feel completely blah about my projects and my knitting only surfaces when I have absolutely nothing else to do.

Then there are the happier periods, like right now, when I am excited about my knitting and moving through projects at a good pace. At the same time, I am also eagerly trying new cooking and baking recipes. Successfully striking that delicate balance between my hobbies feels really good. I doubt I’ll be able to sustain that balance indefinitely, but I am trying my best to enjoy it while it lasts.

One big change I made recently was deciding to be content with my yarn stash. I have quite a bit of yarn, yet I continue to add to it regularly. I’ll come across a neat pattern and buy the yarn for it, but I know it won’t be knitted up for quite awhile because I don’t knit as fast as I buy yarn. When I got overwhelmed with my stash in the past, I destashed, but the thing is, I really like everything in my current stash and I don’t want to part with any of it. So at the end of March, I committed to a six-month yarn diet. I’ve gone on one or two shorter diets before, and I remember them as times of deprivation. Like, when is the diet over so I can buy yarn again? But this time feels different to me — instead of viewing it as not getting to do something I like, I see it as a great opportunity to finally knit the awesome yarns I have. The end result is the same, but the approach is making all the difference. I set it for six months, but I am curious about how long I can actually go and how much of my stash I will use.

To kick off this commitment, I am running a small contest. All you have to do is guess the number of unused balls of yarn in my stash. The winner is the person who guesses the right number (or closest to it); if multiple people guess correctly I will use a random number generator to select the winner. And no, my stash is not listed on Ravelry. The prize? A brand new copy of Hats, Mittens, and Scarves by Andrea Tung. My friend Joyce kindly gifted me with a copy months ago, and the second copy I received on the Stitch ‘n Ride train needs a new home. Contest ends when the comments close on Saturday morning.