All bets are off!
When it comes to buying materials or ingredients for things, I’m all for saving money and buying what you need, except when it comes to yarn (and ground beef). When I buy ground beef, I can always make something with it, pasta sauce, tacos, burgers or make extra taco meat and freeze individual portions for a meal at a later date.
This is kind of how I feel about yarn. While I do have a sizeable working cache of yarn, I do reach a point where I use most of it up and have to replenish or find something to break up the monotony of a project. This year I have made a commitment to make 40 scarves as a personal goal so I have been buying up yarn in scarf sized lots – especially for untested, new yarns. Rarely do I abandon a project because a scarf is a low stakes project and I will generally finish a project if I like the yarn unless it is wonky or terrible. I may not use the yarn for a project in the future, but I will like it enough, there’s the possibility I will purchase more.
The age old question arises – how much is too much yarn. I belong to a few crochet groups on Facebook and there are some devoted to certain types of yarn. Mostly the acquisition of the yarn, because there are more pictures of yarn hauls than of finished projects. Then there are posts that people will share of what another person has generously gifted them and there is a picture of the haul.
People have given me hauls of yarn and I will either use it or share it with other crafters. There are some yarns that I don’t like using. Currently I have five works in progress – some I work on in various places, such as during lunch at work, so I leave this growing afghan in a bag under my desk. I have in my crochet basket by my bed, another by my favorite chair, a small portable scarf that will fit in my purse and an afghan I just started at my knitting/crocheting group this week – solely because my other projects were too large and unwieldy to work on at the time (and I like to work on scarves during intermissions and talks, not in a group).
I don’t think there is too much yarn, if you are actively using it. There are times when I slow down on my active purchasing, but if an incredible sales comes along or there is a yarn I want to try out, then I will get it. I won’t refuse yarn and I won’t pass up a great sale, especially knowing I will use the yarn.
