Saturday, September 10, 2011

Shameless Stash Enhancement

Today I fell off the wagon big time.  I hadn't been buying new quilt fabric, remember?  I was using my scrap-rich stash exclusively and working on cleaning and organizing my sewing area.  But that was before the Connecting Threads warehouse sale.  You have NO IDEA what quilter's heaven it was, with boxes stuffed to overflowing with discontinued fabrics or mill ends and just waiting to be rummaged through by hordes of fabric-crazed quilters.  I was consciously looking for red, but my default setting seems to be to grab blue and green.  Lots of large pieces that can be used for quilt backs if nothing else, and lots of fun prints and colors I like.  That there is 11.1 pounds of fabric, $2.96 per pound.  I'll be using it up for a while.
Knit Picks was having their sale at the same time, except the yarn is $12.00 per pound.  I distinctly remember reading somewhere on the internet that sock yarn doesn't count against your efforts to not increase your yarn stash, and all but the red laceweight is sock yarn.  Most of it in manly colors, too. I know I can use this... sometime in the next decade.  Sigh.  I'm going to need to be careful.  Since starting this blog I have become a little more aware of the things I put in my stash, and they aren't all getting used up at the rate they are getting added.  There is a potential for trouble here.
I haven't even been forthright about all the stash enhancement.  There was an estate sale in our neighborhood a few weeks ago, and these vintage buttons were not the only thing I brought home.  Some vintage alpaca sportweight and some worsted wool found their way back with me, because they were "such a good price."  Maybe if I'd seen the moth damage first I'd have thought twice before being so aquisitive.  Truth is, I don't really think about the specific plans for everything I bring home.  Like the one skein of Tosh Merino Light I picked up at Happy Knits after picking up school uniforms at Dennis -- as a "treat" for coping with Portland traffic. I do make sure it's not an unreasonable amount of money I'm spending.  I am, after all, still Scottish.  But that practical streak doesn't seem to extend to keeping the stash to a reasonable limit.  Not SABLE (Stash Aquisition Beyond Life Expectancy) quite yet, but it could happen.
Of course, buying pretty things that make you happy is a well-known antidote to the severe depression brought on by the imminent start of school on Monday.  And then the vicious cycle of not having time to knit or sew because of teaching and grading will take its toll, and then I'll be tempted to buy more stuff to cheer myself up, and so on.

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