All in all, a pretty good year!

Hello once again, kittens! I know I’m a few days late on this post, but I could not seem to find the time to get my final graphic made and sit at the computer to type things out.

I am pretty pleased with those numbers! Even though my stash reductions were not quite as amazing as I had hoped…they are still heading in the desired direction. I will take a stash maintenance in the yarn category and a 3.4lb loss in the fiber category any day rather than more increases. So I call that a successful year of more mindful stashing! And I *could* have had some actual stash reduction, but anyone who has followed my monthly yardage tallies knows that I had a serious knitting slump from June through November of this year. Knitting next-to-nothing does not make for great amounts of yarn usage: who could have guessed? So this “small” victory feels much bigger because of that fact.

I started off 2017 with 538.9oz of fiber in stash (a whopping 33.7lbs of fluff!) and ended it with 484.2oz (a more healthy 30.3lb); this is a 10% reduction in size. Sounds good to me! A sizable portion of this year’s reduction did come through destashing rather than spinning; spinning was just not my jam this year. I’m not sure why, as when I was spinning, I very much enjoyed it. Maybe because when I’m spinning I am making more yarn, this didn’t sit as well with me when I wasn’t knitting much of anything? I’m hoping to reach a point where I can spin as much as I desire to and knit at a rate that it doesn’t cause any significant stash growth. I’m currently not there. I hope to continue at least this pace of fiber stash reduction in 2018: it would get me below 450oz of in-stash fiber. (And I think it may be enough to finally contain all of my stash in a single unit, which is my main objective? Possibly not quite, but it should be close!)

Since my yarn stash was basically a wash, there isn’t much to say about that. I brought in a lot of yarn to work on one of my blankets, as well as a sweater quantity during ESK’s BFS. I hope to get both of the projects finished this year, so 2018 might have a more impressive reduction. At this point in time, there is nothing at all I need to purchase yarn for, so I think I’m set to get some serious knitting/crafting in! The weather certainly supports it with how dreadful it is outside.

So how about you, kitten? Did you have any goals about yarn/fiber/craft supply usage? Did you manage to meet it? Or did you learn some interesting lessons and insights about yourself instead? (Which I still count as a win.)