Stash knitting challenge

We took advantage of dada's time off during the holidays to do some things we've been meaning to do for a while: we rolled up all our change and brought it to the bank, dada made a gazillion trips from the top floor to the basement to move all our books from our former home office to our future finished basement (for now, it serves as a depository for stuff that just doesn't belong anywhere else in the house!), and painted the nursery!

I say we, but really it was all dada. I just set up the unrealistic time frames and said "I'm sorry I can't help you more" and "I wish I could be more helpful" a lot! But dada got it all done and our office is looking more and more ready to be home to my little lemon drop.

I love the cheerful colour in there now. It's by Behr and is called yellow corn. I'm planning a yellow, orange and white colour scheme in there. Truth is, I'm tired of everything blue and green and since this little one will spend a lot of time in Julian's blue and green hand-me-downs, I'm trying hard to bring in some more cheerful hues into our lives ;0)

I felt bad that hubby was giving up his home office and even worse that since we don't have a new one set-up in the basement yet, the computer had to come in our bedroom!!! But it's really not as bad as I thought. We found a nice unobtrusive desk at Ikea that fits in well with our other bedroom furniture and I have to say dada did a good job at hiding all those wires.

So what does this have to do with my stash knitting challenge? Well daddy had to give up his office for the nursery and I have to give up my yarn closet (the brown armoire in the picture above) so lemon has a place for his clothes. Sure he won't have that much clothes for a while so I can totally still use a couple of shelves in there to store the yarn... but I need to seriously reduce the stash first.

So it's all about stash knitting for the next little while. Since we had to move all the yarn to paint the nursery, I took the time to count it. And it was really scary. I don't recommend you do it because it could totally freak you out. To me stash yarn feels like a big to-do list hanging over me and I totally feel the pressure to knit it up...fast! So getting rid of a bunch of it will feel like a load off actually, and it will be a nice treat to buy yarn on a project by project basis going forward (incidentally, I think that was totally my New Year's resolution last year, but I mean it this year ;0)

So here are my numbers:

• 131 balls of enjoyable yarn earmarked for specific (or general) projects
• 21 balls of sock yarn earmarked for, well, socks!
• 54 odd balls of 'before I was a serious knitter' crappy acrylic I have no interest in actually knitting up but feel is my duty to knit up anyway since I spent money on it'
• 31 balls of yarn I am considering destashing in the very near future because it's been in the stash forever and I still haven't found the right project for them

Yikes! That's a total of 238 balls of yarn! And just thinking about it makes me a little queasy to tell you the truth. And it all looked so innocent too...

My challenge then in the next three months before baby arrives is to reduce the stash by 100 balls either by actually knitting it up, selling it or donating it. I think that is totally do-able considering the donate and sell options available before me. But then again we all know I'm seriously deluded when it comes to yarn so who knows ;0)

Time to make those needles fly! Anyone else brave enough to take on the challenge? If so, you have to come clean with how much yarn you are currently hording and declare a number of balls to clear out either by a specific date as I did, or worse, "before you can buy more yarn!"

I should say that this is not really a knit-along though. Think of it more as a come clean about your stash meme! Be sure to let me know if you play along...I'm hoping to find some comfort in knowing that I am not alone!