My yarn stash. The closet is in the back. Yes, it all fits in there. Almost.

 You may be wondering about my yarn stash. When I remodeled the craft room, I didn\’t mention yarn storage. Maybe you aren\’t wondering about it, but in the event that you are, rest assured that it is all in the craft room.

Part of the point of the craft room was that my stuff was sort of stored all over the house (sound familiar to anyone?). I had fabric in the linen closet, yarn in my clothes closet, yarn in the makeshift craft room (at the time) and yarn in baskets — just everywhere. It needed to be consolidated into one location, where it could be accessed easily, and seen, too. No one wants to have to dig through their entire stash of crafting supplies to find a single skein of yarn or a pair of scissors. Enter Ravelry\’s stash storage page!

Ravelry is such an awesome website — and web community — for so many reasons! Indexing one\’s yarn is only one of them, but it is one of my favorites. When my craft room was done, I went through my entire yarn stash (Well, almost all…I left out 2 Rubbermaid totes of acrylic yarn that I use for prayer shawls/slippers for Christmas. I know which bins they are and the contents pretty much stay the same.) and catalogued every single item.

This took a separate weekend, and I used the time during some recent snow to do it. It was a total of about three days. I photographed all the yarn in groups (unless I already had it in the stash, then, in some cases, I left the original photograph), I recorded how much I have and for a lot of the entries I also included my intentions for the yarn.

It was a great exercise to be reminded of why I bought certain things, and to be reminded of projects I wanted to make. In almost every case, I still want to make the projects. Now that I have a lot more experience with knitting, I feel more ready. I used to spend a lot of time fretting over if I \”ruined\” a project, but I had spent all that money on yarn! Oh, no!! (I\’m over it — mostly) It would also be fun to complete old project ideas to feel like I did it and for the nostalgia of remembering how wide-eyed I was then about knitting. Nothing wrong with recapturing the magic!

When you record your entire stash on Ravelry — and use it correctly afterward — you will enjoy a lot of other benefits besides rekindling your original yarn-knitter relationship.

Ravelry Yarn Stash Benefits

• Ravelry will help you keep track of your stash yardage when you draw from the stash for each new project. To do this, create a new project page and say you are using \”stash yarn.\” There is a button for this midway down the project pages under \”Yarns.\” Didn\’t do it originally? Not too late. Go back to any project page and put it in there! It will ask you how much you used. This takes a little effort on the part of the knitter, but I think it is well worth it. If you do this, you will only ever need to touch the stash page to add new yarns. 
• Having a complete stash record is great, too, when you look at patterns. Pull up a new pattern you are considering and the pattern page will automatically tell you what ideas for yarn you already have. You\’ll quickly know if you need to head to the store, or if you can pull from your stash. Knitter\’s choice to ignore this one and head to the yarn shop anyway. 
• Do you have a hard copy pattern in your hands and need yarn for it? You have a couple of choices. If you look up the specific pattern on Ravelry, you could look for yarn that way. Or, you can go to your stash and filter it using the little drop down menus at the top of the page. One says \”sort by name\” (of yarn) and one says \”filter your stash…\” . Both of these contain all manner of filters for use when you are looking for yarn. 
• One drawback: I noticed that when I filtered my yarn for weight recently, it did not include all the yarns I thought it would. For example, I wanted a bulky weight yarn that would get me 3.5 stitches per inch, that\’s pretty specific. But I started with a \”bulky\” filter. It left out Lamb\’s Pride, which was one I had in mind. Turn out the filter considers Lamb\’s Pride Bulky to actually be a super bulky yarn. I just fixed this by adding a couple of more weights to my search, like aran and super bulky. No system is perfect, and, in the end, you still have to swatch and really see what works in real life. 
• Finally, it is just fun sometimes to peruse your stash and see what you have, what you might need. Or what might jog your memory: Oh, yeah! I forgot I had that! This is a little easier than digging through multiple boxes and baskets, searching for yarn. Though on a rainy day, that is a fun activity. 

A lovely time to stay indoors and count yarn! This is the view from my upstairs craft room window. We look over the street, as from the \”top.\” All the forced-air furnace steam makes me think of the rooftops of London. I know. It\’s a stretch.

The snow was so lovely…

Until it wasn\’t. Dang rain!!

What do you do when you have your first grandchild? You knit loads of stuff, of course. I admit, I did not take as many photos as I should have of the little guy Ethan in all his new duds, but I have some samplings!

First up: In the birthing \”suite,\” my daughter Jolene, my son-in-law Andrew and I snuggled in for a very long time together, waiting for the arrival of baby Ethan. Jo in the bed eating ice chips, and Andrew and I ordering occasional room service from the hospital kitchen and eating it in front of Jolene. For 20 hours. (Eating in front of the laboring mom may be considered rude, but I figured it was my turn; this was my first experience not being the mom in the bed. And wow it was awesome!)

Between the eating and non-eating of food, Jo and I knitted the hours away, while my son-in-law

fidgeted and paced the room, periodically asking if Jo was okay. (This amusingly reminded me a bit of Colonel Brandon, in Sense & Sensibility. Without the danger part, of course. )

The knitting was productive as we had such a long time to produce. I made the baby a new little to-go hat and started some tube-sock style knee highs for his little legs; in the event that he may want to play some basketball later. Babies are, after all, cooped up for some time in utero and you never know. 😉

Second order(s) of business for the knitting grandma: I had left behind a blanket at home that I had started a couple months before. The baby was coming about 4 weeks early and the blanket wasn\’t ready. It was a pattern I had been saving for 8 years — since about the first month or two I began knitting. Jolene was still in college back then, no babies on the horizon, but I came across the pattern at the Knitting Bee Yarn Shop in Beaverton, Oregon and I just had to have it. The pattern was too complicated for me at the time, of course, but it embodied the spirit of my home state of Oregon; and more importantly, it embodied the spirit of my hippy dippy daughter.

Delivery room hat! Matching socks not pictured!

The blanket pattern was knit in one piece but looked quilt-square style, with alternating evergreen trees and raised peace signs. These were celtic knots, but I didn\’t know that at the time. Looking back, this made the pattern even more meaningful, given my Scottish, MacLean heritage. The name of the pattern is Peace, Love and PDX and it is actually free!

I purchased some Cascade 220 in a color called \”Shire,\” making the whole thing even more charming to all of us. Once I knitted the main part of the blanket, I added the called-for i-cord in a contrasting orange color, as Halloween is Jolene\’s favorite holiday. Then, I felt it needed a backing. Like flannel. But how? TECHknitter to the rescue! This woman\’s website is so chock full of good information — it truly is astonishing. Her help in adding a flannel backing was key to my final success!

The flannel took about 3 hours to whipstitch on with a tiny sewing needle, using orange thread on orange fabric, but it was so worth it. I think I may want to line a hat next! I was able to give it to baby Ethan pretty quickly after he got home, which was great!

I knitted the baby a lamb hat by Gabrielle Danskknit and then a jolly roger-motif hat with some mittens.

On the blocks, drying and stretching out.

The flannel backing made the piece feel much more substantial.

There be pirates here!