Decision Making Time

 

It feels like I have been working on stash reduction for the last 10 years.  At least.  But while I continued to teach and write, I needed more than just the yarns I wanted to work with - I needed yarns for workshops and for projects designed for publication.

Once I stopped doing craft fairs, I didn't need the depth of inventory I routinely carried, given my reduced output.  It wouldn't do to run out of yarn and not be able to weave while I waited for more yarn to arrive.  So I had a rather large inventory of a large range of colours in the yarn I used most often.

Some of my stash hadn't been touched in years.  Decades, truth be told.  It was 'too fine' for re-sale - and I had too little time to weave something for myself.  Some of the yarn simply stagnated, ignored.

Until I finally got rid of most of the teaching stash.  I still have too much wool and silk - much of it very fine.  And my eyesight is such that some of it is simply far too fine for me to want to weave with it.

So I shipped a box of silk to another weaver who works with fine silk routinely and who I know will actually work with it.  I'm hanging onto the fine wool because I've been using it to ply my handspun.

And there's another 'stash' I need to deal with.  Either drag my wheel out and start spinning or...decide I'm done?  But I've been hanging onto that because if there comes a time I cannot weave, I can likely still spin.  So...saving it for my 'retirement' from weaving?  Ditto the lace making...

But there comes a time when, in order to use up what I have, I need to order more yarn.  (I know, I know.)

I'm halfway through the current warp with one more to go to use up the last of the mercerized cotton.  So I found myself fretting about what I was going to do after that, given the tag ends of spools from sectional beaming, plus the cones/tubes of fine cottons I found as I began to see the deep dark corners of my yarn storage area.

Last night I pulled out the Brassard yarn card and have made a tentative decision about what I'm going to order.  I'm going to look at the colours more closely in the daylight and check to make sure I'm happy with those yarns, given what I need to use up as weft.  And then place an order for 16 pounds of 2/16 cotton for warps to use up those dribs and drabs of yarn left over from all the tea towel warps I've been weaving for the past year or so.  And once those are more or less used up, it may be time to work on the rayon stash.  I still have way too many scarves, so maybe it is time to weave some shawls, too?  

TBD.