Busting the Yarn Stash

Eric recently built me new bookshelves to store my yarn and my books on in my studio.

Eric Assembling the shelving.
My wonderful husband putting together my cool bookshelves.

They are amazing! The shelves themselves are adjustable, so I can accommodate for those extra tall cones and those short little ones too. They are deep, and I can finally fit all of my cones of yarn in one place.

After getting all of my yarn in one spot- it came to my attention that I have two very specific categories:

  1. Odds and Ends
  2. Designated Projects

The odds and ends are either leftover cones from larger projects that I had done in the past, or they are a couple cones here or there of materials that I found inspiring and wanted to have in my arsenal to blend with other yarns. I have some beautiful thin wools, fine linens, and a couple varying weights of silks weighting to be used. There isn't enough here though to plan large runs of items. These would be specialty pieces with only one or two produced.

Some of the odds and ends yarns in their natural hues (linen, cotton, hemp, wool and silk)
Some of the odds and ends yarns in their natural hues (linen, cotton, hemp, wool and silk)

The Designated projects are yarns that I purchased for production work. There is a lot of cotton ready to made into bandanas and wools to be made into blankets. Theres are on the list of thing things to come, but have to wait their turn. These yarns aren't as diverse, but they have specific ideas waiting for them.

Some of the designated yarns. The all white wool yarn are reserved for blankets, and the cottons were ordered for a run of bandanas.
Some of the designated yarns. The all white wool yarn are reserved for blankets, and the cottons were ordered for a run of bandanas.

The question that comes to my mind is how do I incorporate my odds and ends into some production work? The reason I ask this is I want to make the most out of these materials that I can so that I can make room for more yarn and keep the cycle of production going. I had a few ideas in mind that is going to take some time to get to.

  1. Use some of the thinner threads for an exercise in collapse weave. There are a few different ways to accomplish this type of weave- over-spun threads, using felt-able yarns, and different weight threads. It would be fun to create a set of shawls that had collapsed details, but not used in the whole piece to have some interest.
  2. Use a solid colored warp and then intermix different colors of the same weight and material yarn to create limited edition lengths of cloth (either scarves, or yardage) that has color striations and variance.
  3. Use the heavier colors that I have in some overshot patterns- creating sets that have different colors in the set.
My plant based fiber shelf. I love all the different weights of yarn, waiting to be used.
My plant based fiber shelf. I love all the different weights of yarn, waiting to be used.

How do you use up your odds and ends? If I do any of the above ideas I will write some posts about yarn busting for weavers! It always seems so much easier for knitters to bust through yarn stashes then it is for weavers- it could be that it is easier to come up with smaller projects then it is for weavers.