We Love Yarn: Meet Our Yarn Stashes

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As part of our celebrations leading up to I Love Yarn Day, we’re celebrating our yarn stashes. Take a look at the team’s precious hoards of yarn, and find out how they’re organized, what we have the most of, and what we’re planning to cast on next.

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Featured above: Julia’s stash rainbow.

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Also don’t forget to enter our annual I Love Yarn Day giveaway for the chance to win some awesome new yarn, notions, and more from our sponsors!

Now, let’s do some stash-diving and take a look at what the Interweave team is working with.

Stephanie’s Stash of Many Colors

Stephanie White, Content Manager

A few years ago, I was working at company that, among other things, sold yarn online. We photographed the yarn in house, which meant that we needed one of every yarn in Every. Single. Color. Our sample room would reach capacity, and all that glorious yarn was given away with first dibs going to employees.  

Before I started working at this company, my yarn stash was practically non-existent. I bought yarn for a specific project, made said project, and then picked out my next project. After a few years working at this company, I now have more yarn than I know what to do with. As you may have guessed, I have a lot of “one of every color” yarns—I may have 10 or 15 skeins of the same yarn, but no two colors are the same.

I’ve had to get creative (striped sweaters are my friends), but so far, I’ve knit five sweaters entirely from stash yarn, and have a few more queued up and ready to go. I think the Rossore Pullover by Courtney Spainhower will be the perfect canvas for my next colorful creation. 

Do Your Organize Your Stash by Yarn Weight or Color? (Or Do You Just Toss the Skeins in Bins to Deal with Later?)

Joni Coniglio, Senior Project Editor

My yarn stash consists mostly of skeins that are left over from projects. However, I am also guilty of impulse-buying one or two skeins of a certain yarn just because I love the color. (I tell myself that I have the perfect accessory in mind, but I’m lying.)  

I’m not great about keeping my yarn organized. I usually toss skeins in a bin and then forget which bin they are in (when I actually DO find that perfect accessory pattern). And because I can’t find the yarn I am looking for, I go out and buy MORE yarn. It’s a vicious cycle.

I once tried to organize my skeins by color, but I realized that it would be more helpful to organize them by weight instead. So, a couple of weeks ago I pulled all the yarn bins from the closet in our guest room and dumped everything out in one big pile. I labeled the bins with various weights and threw skeins into each bin accordingly. When I had finished, I was surprised to find that I had more DK-weight bins than any other. I’m not sure what I can conclude from this discovery (other than that while I may be drawn to that weight when it’s in the skein, I don’t tend to knit with it).  

In any case, I’m off to find some great accessory patterns (preferably in DK weight)!

My Yarn-y Rainbow

Julia Pillard, Assistant Editor

My stash isn’t something I really think about. I mean, it has definitely overrun the borders of the containers I had for it. But I rarely look at all my yarn altogether.

I took some time this week to pull out about 90% of my stash and lay it out. I have plans for some of my stash, but a lot of it was purchased or given to me without any real plans behind it. Once I pulled out all this yarn, I realized two things. 1) My stash has been multiplying while I haven’t been looking. And 2) there’s no one color I’m drawn to exclusively. The skeins ranged from deep blues to bright yellows, stark whites to multicolored hues.

There was something truly joyful at seeing this rainbow laid out before me, filled with possibility and waiting to be turned into something new. It’s also motivated me to really take a look through my stash next time I start a project. I have all this gorgeous yarn—I should do something with it!

We’re Going to Need Another Bin Over Here

Andrea Lotz, Web and Social Media Manager

I spent most of 2020 trying to avoid buying new yarn and working through my stash, with moderate success. Then when 2021 hit and we were still not back to anything resembling normal life, I’ll admit that I went a bit nuts for buying yarn from all my favorite indie dyers on Instagram: Ocean by the Sea, Webspun Wares, Explorer Knits, and Höner och Eir being a few favorites. The result is that my shelf of six cubes of yarn, which had been a stable arrangement for several years, had to expand into two new cubes.

I’ve always sorted my yarn by weight, and this year I went through all of my stash yarns and organized them into even smaller categories. Apparently fingering is my favorite weight of yarn, and I had to divide it up into light fingering and regular.

Occasionally I still buy the exact yarn used in the magazine when I just need “exactly that” project. Most recently, I was gifted enough Ancient Arts Lascaux Worsted to knit the Baryon Shrug from Wool Studio Vol. VII, in the exact colorway as the sample. I’m hoping to cast on after the holidays and then take a serious stab at some stash-busting projects.

A Yarn Stash that Delights

Allison Korleski, Video Producer and Podcast Host

Once upon a time I sedulously organized my stash by fiber, weight, and color. These days I shove it all in a box. Or boxes. In part, that’s because my stash has shrunk from “I can set up a yarn store in my basement” to a well-rounded-but-no-longer-obscene quantity.

I try to organize by weight for convenience’s sake, but more and more I’m organizing for “pretty” as well. A bin of color makes me happy just looking at it. And while we can get caught up in “I need to knit” and “I should be knitting now,” don’t we knit mostly because it delights us? 

Yarn for a Lifetime

Tammy Honaman, Interweave Content Director

If I’m being honest with myself, I have more yarn than I will likely use in my lifetime. I take solace in knowing I’m not alone in this but seriously, what compels me to want even more yarn when I have a secretary and a hope chest filled, and at least six project bags with yarn, pattern, and needles ready to go? And what makes me think I can feasibly complete all the things before I need to have yarn for the next great project? It’s like a phenomenon. And, I’m not complaining. I love being surrounded by the luxury of merino wool in all the weights, with a few cashmere skeins sprinkled in, and pom-poms on top. 

While taking stock in the spring (and moving into a larger hope chest), I realized I had a lot of worsted weight and plenty of bulky. I did what any of us would do and improved my selection of fingering and DK weight to have on hand, just in case. Like just in case I want to make one of the amazing patterns in Knits Gifts! 

I do not want to tempt fate and proclaim my need for more time to create all the things on my list and use up my stash. I will, however, make a commitment to work harder to carve out more time to just be and to just knit. As the temperatures change and the days grow shorter, this will be easier to accomplish.

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Now we’d love to hear about your yarn stash! Let us know in the comments: How do you organize your yarn? What do you have the most of? What’s your most precious skein?

Use Your Yarn Stash

If you’d like to learn more about what’s in that stash, check out our online workshop video, All About Yarn. You’ll learn so much about yarn, even if you’ve been knitting (or crocheting) for decades! Looking for ideas of what to do with stash yarn? Check out our Yarn Leftovers series, learn to knit a custom hat with stash yarn, and get ideas for one-skein gifts.

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Get to Know Your Yarn Stash + Put it to Use