My Life in Stitches: No New Yarn!

It’s a bad sign when something that should be fun stresses you out.

Like buying yarn. It’s soft, colorful and so full of possibilities. Like buying yarn when someone blesses you with money to buy the soft, colorful goodness. That should be fun…but it’s that last part, the full of possibilities that sucks all the joy out of yarn buying for me.

My Tuscany

Yesterday, I went to my local yarn shop to pick up some Skeins yarn. Someone I know is making a Travelling Woman in the Tuscany colorway, and I was in love shortly after seeing it.  I thought, if I buy any more yarn this year, I’m buying that.

Now let me explain about my yarn buying habits. I only allow myself to buy yarn when I’ve used something else in my stash. I have a tendency to be obsessive with my crafting supplies and buying way more than I need. And I’ve never met a craft I didn’t like. I have boxes and baskets of beads when I went through my jewelry-making phase. Not to mention all the crochet books and needles I own that I don’t use. When I picked knitting up again, I promised that wouldn’t be the case with yarn.

Having said that, I have enough yarn that I could knit for the rest of this year and not run out. And that’s after knocking out quite a few projects since my husband deployed. I vowed that I was NOT buying any more this year unless I already knew what I wanted to do with it or needed to go with something else in my stash. And I promised myself that, if I did break my rule, I would only buy what I really, really wanted.

My Daybreak by Stephen West

So even though I loved the Skeins Tuscany colorway, I didn’t run to my LYS (local yarn shop, for you non-knitters). I behaved. I really, really wanted but it didn’t meet my other yarn-buying criteria. But then a friend gave me money for yarn, so…Tuscany it was. Since I was going, I also realized that I needed some brown fingering yarn to go with some Lorna’s Laces I already in my stash to make a Daybreak for a friend. Two skeins of yarn. That was all I went to get.

The problem came once I got to the counter. My LYS has a punchcard rewards system and after my purchases were rung up, I was really close to getting another punch. All I had to do was pick ONE more thing more than $6...

Just one thing over $6…

Sadly, I was in the store for over 45 minutes. There were so many choices. I saw lots of yarn I liked (more Skiens but in DK, Miss Babs is always a favorite and of course, my baby, Neighborhood Fiber Co) but I had no idea what I was going to do with it. So I couldn’t get it. See rules of yarn buying above.  And I’m working on the longest project I’d ever done, a Wool Leaves blanket (I made it bigger than the pattern) and I wasn’t going to be done for a while.

I even checked my faves on Raverly to see if I could find something I needed yarn for, but by then, my head started to hurt.  After wandering around for a long while, I spotted something that I did want. A PATTERN! It was Juneberry Triangle by Jared Flood. I almost screamed with joy!

So a nice trip to the yarn store turned in to 45 minutes of frustration, which only renewed my vow that I wasn’t going to buy any more yarn this year! It’s too stressful.