At the start of the year I posted a stash post with the caption “How it started”. I set a New Year’s Resolution for myself to focus on using what I had. This was meant for all of my things: books, yarn, art supplies, and for the most part I am doing really well. The goal was to have a mid-year post, “How it’s going”, and a year-end that said, “How it ended”. Ideally that last one would have muuuuch less yarn than the first photo.

Here’s the thing. I did set this up with my last yarn purchase being a year long sock club where yarn and pattern were provided once a month throughout the year. I had also decided to join in for the Year of Gnomes project throughout 2022, creating a little colour coordinated family of gnomes for my home.

Although I have been knitting from stash for all of my other projects, and I haven’t purchased more than 10 skeins of yarn this year (mostly for gifting projects), I have not been beating down my stash supply as quickly as I thought. Having one year long project that didn’t use stash, and one that used tiny bits of a particular set of skeins throughout the year really slowed that process down, visually.

The projects that are in between are smaller and slower, as the focus has been to complete one pair of socks and a gnome, at very least, each month. Some of my gift knitting has been pretty large too.

These are not excuses! I am still sticking to my plan. I have bought very little in the supplies region this year. I am getting used to not buying yarn unless I need it. (I scrolled past three “this is your last chance” posts this morning… that’s how they always get me… how strong am I?). I am still on track, it just doesn’t look like I’ve made much of an impact just yet. So maybe this year is getting me on track, and next year will be the uber stash use!

Quick disclaimer: I am a strong believer that my hobbies should be fun. Number one. I put this “rule” in place to reduce the stress I had about all of the supplies, books, tea, I had on hand and wasn’t getting to. I had accumulated all of these things that I was excited about, but there was so much of it that it took too long to enjoy anything new that came in. New purchases were fun, but then fizzled a little bit when I saw all the other “new purchases” waiting for their turn at home.
This wasn’t put into place to prevent me from enjoying my hobbies, or to prevent me from making a purchase if it interested me. I said “buying ban” to make it stick in my brain a little more, and make me stop and really consider a purchase before making it. “Will I use it now?”, “is this exactly what I have been looking for?”, “will it still be here in a couple months when I will be more ready to use it?”, “do I have some projects like this ready to go at home?”, things like that. It’s just a stop and consider “rule”.
You do you for what you need to do for something like this, but remember that this is also supposed to still be fun!