Mike and I have simple tastes to begin with, but we’ve been making a conscious effort this past year to live even further below our means. Right now, our big focus is reigning in wasteful spending. As nerds, we were already mostly immune to the whole phenomenon of “keeping up with the Jonses”. Mike has always been frugal. As for me, combine a hatred of crowds and my general agoraphobia, and I don’t have much problem staying out of stores and in the confines of our budget.
Except when it comes to yarn. I knew I had a small problem — we like to joke that I will work for yarn*, or that I’ve programmed the coordinates for all the yarn stores in the state into Mike’s GPSr — but it was really just a joke, right? That delusion died on the day we started tracking our expenses: that little column in the spreadsheet labeled yarn had a big number at the bottom of it. Just to be sure, I went into my Ravelry stash, and totaled up all of my yarn. Just how much did I really have?
Eleven miles of yarn. Eleven miles. And that’s just what I’ve cataloged; there are still a few additional shameful purchases lurking the corners of my craft room that aren’t in that total. Why did I have so many balls of sock yarn when I’d only knitted three whole socks? Generally, I’m a fan of moderation, but serious problems call for serious measures: that was the day I put myself on a yarn diet for the rest of the year
I’m proud to report that I lasted a whole six weeks; I knew I was tempting fate by hanging out at the yarn store all day. Oh well. A journey of a thousand steps and all that. Now if the rest of you knitters would just stop tempting me with all of your gorgeous projects…
*but, really, I will work for yarn
While Jess doesn’t have quite that level of yarn addiction, she is very tempted by it especially if she actually goes to a yarn store or something. Her current addiction is D&D dice and miniatures. She can’t stop buying dice. She’s convinced that she’ll find that magic set that always rolls great.
Heath’s last blog post: A good day’s work!
I have enough yarn to lay it from here to Two Rivers. I feel like a slacker with my measly 6 miles of yarn. I totally had to add it all up when I saw you did it.
I bet I have eleven miles just of sock yarn. Of course, that is the only yarn that I have in sufficient quantities for entire projects. The rest is odd balls. Sigh. WILL WORK FOR YARN.
Annika’s last blog post: Scenes from Thanksgiving
I used to be terrible in art supply stores. I used to spend at least an hour or so staring at random items I probably would never really use. I’d even hold on to stuff with the intention of buying, but finally talk myself out of it at the end.
Good luck…Artist/Crafter self control is a hard thing to come by
Six weeks is impressive. It’s all I can do to wait until after Christmas to go to my yarn store. I can’t wait for the gift cards which I damn well better get since every time someone asks me what I want I tell them a gift card to Woolworks.
Ha, I was just digging around in my stash for yarn to make a dice bag…
This is distortion to the point of slander! It’s true that I bought 5 d20s last week in the hope that one of them would not keep rolling me 1s, but spending $2.60 on dice for the first time in over a year is hardly a crippling addiction.
Moreover, while I love to fondle yarn, I mostly have such a hard time choosing that I walk out of the yarn store with nothing. A friend gave me a large chunk of her stash a couple of years ago and since then I’ve bought next to no yarn.
I will cop to the D&D minis, though, but being around people with a far worse mini problem makes me feel better.
Best of luck with your yarn diet, and with completely ignoring Heath’s comments about me
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Jess’s last blog post: Spectators of suicide
“keeping up with the Jonses”.
Yeah, that Spike Jonse loves his yarn. He’s obsessed.
Lucas’s last blog post: Brian Brushwood from Scam School has a "Whoops!" moment.