Sock Stash Knitting

It's live.

KFYSS 2008 (Knit From Your SOCK Stash) is live and bloggable. The template needs tweaking (danged free blogskins, the Blogger bar is missing from the top) but otherwise, we're launched.

The Rules are up. To summarize, once you've committed to KFYSS2008, you must use stashed sock yarn for all socks knitted during the year (until September 30th). There are a few exceptions—if you're in sock KALs like I am, you can buy KAL-specific yarn. But the rules are, I hope, structured in a way to prevent the workarounds used to justify sneak purchases.

If you buy it, you must use it immediately. That's the gist of it.

Please note: let's avoid the whole "trying to kill the LYS" nonsense that went around last year after the rise of the original Knit From Your Stash. I'm not suggesting we buy no yarn; merely that we examine our sockaholism and try to get it to a manageable level by curtailing the "buy now knit later" mentality that is so easy to get into when dealing with socks.

Socks are small, quick, and require one or two skeins of yarn. The very beauty of the sock is also its danger. It is so easy to lull oneself into thinking, "it's only ONE skein". But one skein leads to five which leads to a stash closet larger than one's wardrobe (including the "I'll fit into these someday" clothes) and pretty soon, well... it isn't pretty to watch.

Think about it. One skein of handpainted such as my fave, Mountain Colors or Lorna's can go for anywhere from $10-20 per skein. Let's use $15 as an average. Say that every weekend, you get your paycheck and go to the yarn store. You pick up one or two skeins of sock yarn. It's only $30, right?

Multiply that by 52 weeks in the year and you have spent $1,560 dollars (one thousand five hundred and sixty dollars) on SOCK YARN and you have 104 skeins of sock yarn in your stash.

If it takes you 20 hours to knit a sock, you'll need 2,080 hours to eat up that stash or 86 days—that's 24 hours straight—to finish them. If you can knit four hours per night per week (after work, not counting weekends), it'll take 104 weeks to knit through the stash. (Also note I'm not a math whiz—if you see an error, please correct it.)

So at that rate, a person can knit about one skein's worth per week (one pair). If you knit faster, I commend you. But I can't. So I see the danger. I probably have about 25 skeins or sock projects on the dockets (pre-Ravelry organization, it may be worse).

Something's gotta give. Besides my closet doors.

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Labels: KFYSS 2008, musings, ravelry, stash enhancement, yarn diet

posted by Jeanne @ 6:46 PM