S.W.A.P.*

*Stash Weeding and Procurement

This weekend, I attended a yarn swap, brainchild of fellow knitter Staci. The idea was that participants were to dig through their stashes, find stuff they didn't want any more for whatever reason (ugly, tired of looking at it, really ugly, only one ball of something leftover from a project, hideously ugly, etc.) and bring it to the swap. For each item one brought in, a numbered ticket was drawn from a bag. Multiple balls/hanks/skeins of the same thing were considered one thing for purposes of the swap. Numbers were called in order and when your numbers came up, it was your turn to take something from the pile.



It was immediately apparent, considering the enormous pile of fiber on the table, that this could be a lot of fun or get really ugly really fast. Turns out we all played fair, we were all civil, and no blood was drawn. Who knew?

I was a little nervous about the swap, mostly because I didn't think I had much of a stash. But turns out digging through one's entire pile of yarn is an excellent organizational reality check. I came up with 18 things to donate, from zebra-stripe sock yarn that I just couldn't bring myself to use, to leftover yarn from Jeff's British Checks Sweater, to leftover scraps of Cascade 220 from any number of projects. It was fun to see people's faces light at up at balls of yarn that no longer held any interest for me.



I've never been one to buy yarn for yarn's sake. I kind of need to know where I'm going with it before I buy something. But I think I got some fun stuff. I got some sock yarn (of course) and some brown worsted that might become a scarf and some brown sport weight that might become a pair of gloves. And some crazy red wool/recycled silk stuff from Tibet that I grabbed in a moment of panic.

Good times! I hope we do this again.