2013: the year of the de-stash

We've been living in our house for 10 years now, and last year was something of a turning point for beginning to declutter our home.  Over Christmas we emptied the kitchen cupboards and the dresser with the aim of only putting half of the contents back in.  It sounds fairly trivial, but it was significant for us.  We've slowly made progress in other parts of the house (we can almost fit our books onto the shelves, and we're working on the CDs - no mean feat!) and now I need to think about my yarn stash.

I was hopping around some links from the FO Friday gathering and came across a StashBuster Challenge 2013 link.  It looks like a great idea, so I'm joining in...

Step one feels a bit like going to an AA meeting:  "Hi, my name's Lorna and I'm a yarnaholic.  It's been 2 months since my last yarn purchase"

Step two is to take some pictures of my stash.  Most of it is tucked away in the wardrobe in our spare room.  Some of it is even in proper boxes:

So... here's some of the detail:

I'm calling this the "what was I thinking?" box.  Most of these yarns were bought when I started knitting and before I'd got some idea about what I like knitting with.  I guess we have to learn somehow.  I think I'll try to find people who like novelty yarns to take much of this.  Although you never know - I might get over my dislike of knitting toys and make a fluffy teddybear.

 This box was originally sock yarns (the bottom half in the picture) left over from knitting baby blankets, but some chunky yarns seem to have snuck in.  The 3 skeins at the top right are of Artesano Embrace, which I received as a gift for taking out a magazine subscription.  I wasn't too keen on the pattern they came with, but haven't worked out what I'd rather do with them.

Lots of small balls of dk acrylic yarn.  Again, I bought most of these in the early days, without much of a clue what I'd do with them.  There are more scattered around the house from when they've come in handy as oddments.

This box started as baby yarns, but I can see a couple of chunky yarns which have snuck in there too...

And this was originally cotton yarns (mainly dk) or yarns with a similar feel.  I quite like these, and perhaps I'll do a couple of face/dishcloths as quick knits to use them up a little.  I can see a couple of balls of sock yarn which have found their way in here; perhaps they're hiding from the rampant chunky yarns!

Back in the early days I started a granny square in some acrylic dk yarns from a local shop.  I kind of fell out with it, but perhaps I can find a way to like it again.

And finally, this is an example of the non-boxed yarns.  Hiding in here are some forgotten balls of Rowan 4-ply wool and some lovely soft sock yarn (3 skeins) which I bought to make a light blanket with.  I've decided that probably won't work, but I haven't decided what to do instead - maybe I need to buy some more in a different colourway to get a nice combination (no!  mustn't buy anything more!)

There's more than this (including a number of giveaways from magazines), but these are the main culprits for now...

I have a couple of more special yarns to think about though: 4 skeins of Debbie Bliss Paloma, and 2 of Manos del Uruguay Silk Blend.   I don't want to waste these, but I do want to use them so I'm looking for some good ideas for these first.